’Do you propose I should trundle it myself, like a hawker’s barrow?’ said I.  ’Why, my good man, if I had to stop here, anyway, I should prefer to buy a house and garden!’

‘Come and look at her!’ he cried; and, with the word, links his arm in mine and carries me to the outhouse where the chaise was on view.

It was just the sort of chaise that I had dreamed of for my purpose:  eminently rich, inconspicuous, and genteel; for, though I thought the postmaster no great authority, I was bound to agree with him so far.  The body was painted a dark claret, and the wheels an invisible green.  The lamp and glasses were bright as silver; and the whole equipage had an air of privacy and reserve that seemed to repel inquiry and disarm suspicion.  With a servant like Rowley, and a chaise like this, I felt that I could go from the Land’s End to John o’ Groat’s House amid a population of bowing ostlers.  And I suppose I betrayed in my manner the degree in which the bargain tempted me.

‘Come,’ cried the postmaster—­’I’ll make it seventy, to oblige a friend!’

‘The point is:  the horses,’ said I.

‘Well,’ said he, consulting his watch, ’it’s now gone the ’alf after eight.  What time do you want her at the door?’

‘Horses and all?’ said I.

‘’Osses and all!’ says he.  ’One good turn deserves another.  You give me seventy pound for the shay, and I’ll ’oss it for you.  I told you I didn’t make ’osses; but I can make ’em, to oblige a friend.’

What would you have?  It was not the wisest thing in the world to buy a chaise within a dozen miles of my uncle’s house; but in this way I got my horses for the next stage.  And by any other it appeared that I should have to wait.  Accordingly I paid the money down—­perhaps twenty pounds too much, though it was certainly a well-made and well-appointed vehicle—­ordered it round in half an hour, and proceeded to refresh myself with breakfast.

The table to which I sat down occupied the recess of a bay-window, and commanded a view of the front of the inn, where I continued to be amused by the successive departures of travellers—­the fussy and the offhand, the niggardly and the lavish—­all exhibiting their different characters in that diagnostic moment of the farewell:  some escorted to the stirrup or the chaise door by the chamberlain, the chambermaids and the waiters almost in a body, others moving off under a cloud, without human countenance.  In the course of this I became interested in one for whom this ovation began to assume the proportions of a triumph; not only the under-servants, but the barmaid, the landlady, and my friend the postmaster himself, crowding about the steps to speed his departure.  I was aware, at the same time, of a good deal of merriment, as though the traveller were a man of a ready wit, and not too dignified to air it in that society.  I leaned forward with a lively curiosity;