and ’artily glad I was, for I was far on to famish, having ridden whole twenty-five miles in a cold, frosty air without morsel of wittles of any sort.  When the Bart. pulled up, he said, “Now, ladies and gentlemen—­twenty minutes allowed here, and let me adwise you to make the most of it.”  I took the ’int, and heat away like a regular bagman, who can always dispatch his ducks and green peas in ten minutes.

We started again, and about one hundred yards below the pike stood a lad with a pair of leaders to clap on, for the road, as I said before, was werry woolley.  “Now, you see, Mr. Jorrocks,” said Sir Wincent, “I do old Pikey by having my ’osses on this side.  The old screw drew me for four shillings one day for my leaders, two each way, so, says I, ’My covey, if you don’t draw it a little milder, I’ll send my ’osses from the stable through my friend Sir William Jolliffe’s fields to the other side of your shop,’ and as he wouldn’t, you see here they are, and he gets nothing.”

The best of company, they say, must part, and Baronets “form no exception to the rule,” as I once heard Dr. Birkbeck say.  About a mile below the halfway ’ouse another coach hove in sight, and each pulling up, they proved to be as like each other as two beans, and beneath a mackintosh, like a tent cover, I twigged my friend Brackenbury’s jolly phiz.  “How are you, Jorrocks?” and “How are you, Brack?” flew across like billiard-balls, while Sir Wincent, handing me the ribbons, said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I wish you all a good morning and a pleasant ride,” and Brack having done the same by his coach and passengers, the two heroes met on terry firmey, as we say in France, to exchange way-bills and directions about parcels.  “Now,” said Sir Wincent, “you’ll find Miss——­’s bustle under the front seat—­send it off to the Marine Parade the instant you get in, for she wants it to make herself up to-night for a party.”  “By Jove, that’s lucky,” said Brackenbury, “for I’ll be hanged if I haven’t got old Lady——­’s false dinner-set of ivories in my waistcoat pocket, which I should have forgot if you hadn’t mentioned t’other things, and then the old lady would have lost her blow-out this Christmas.  Here they are,” handing out a small box, “and mind you leave them yourself, for they tell me they are costly, being all fixed in coral, with gold springs, and I don’t know what—­warranted to eat of themselves, they say.”  “She has lost her modesty with her teeth, it seems,” said Sir Wincent.  “Old women ought to be ashamed to be seen out of their graves after their grinders are gone.  I’ll pound it the old tabby carn’t be under one hundred.  But quick! who does that d——­d parrot and the cock-a-too belong to that you’ve got stuck up there? and look, there’s a canary and all!  I’ll be d——­d if you don’t bring me a coach loaded like Wombwell’s menagerie every day!  Well, be lively!  ’Twill be all the same one hundred years hence.—­All right?  Sit tight!  Good night!”