pent their forenoons
when I was young.

As the great rumbling chariot creaked away westward, there came across
my child-heart a kind of consciousness that I had been Wronged, and
Cheated out of my inheritance. Why was I all clad in laces and velvet
but yesterday, and to-day apparelled like a tramping pedlar's
foster-brat? Why was I, who was used to ride in coaches, and on
ponyback, and on the shoulder of my own body-servant, and was called
"Little Master," and made much of, to be carted away in a vile dray like
this? But what is a child of eight years old to do? and how is he to
make head against those who are older and wickeder than he? I knew
nothing about lawyers, or wills, or the Rogueries of domestics. I only
knew that I had been foully and shamefully Abused since my dear
Grandparent's death; and in that wagon, I think, as I lay tumbling and
sobbing on that straw, were first planted in me those seeds of a Wild,
and sometimes Savage, disposition that have not made my name to be
called "Dangerous" in vain.

We were a small and not a very merry company under the wagon tilt. There
was a Tinker, with all his accoutrements of pots and kettles about him,
who was lazy, as most Tinkers are when not at hard work, and lay on his
back chewing straw, and cursing me fiercely whenever I moved. There was
a Welsh gentleman, very ragged and dirty, with a wife raggeder and
dirtier than he. He was addressed as Captain, and was bound, he said,
for Bristol, to raise soldiers for the King's Service. He beat his wife
now and then, before we came to Hounslow. There was the tinker's dog, a
great terror to me; for although he feigned to sleep, and to snore as
much as a Dog can snore, he always kept one little red eye fixed upon
me, and gave a growl and made a Snap whenever I turned on the straw.
There was the Wagoner's child that was sickly, and continually cried for
its mammy; and lastly there was a buxom servant-maid, with a little
straw hat and cherry ribbons over a Luton lace mob, and a pretty
flowered gown pulled through the placket-holes, and a quilted petticoat,
and silver buckles in her shoes, and black mits, who was going home to
see her Grandmother at Stoke Pogis,--so she told me, and made me
bitterly remember that I had now no Grandmother,--and was as clean and
bright and smiling as a new pin, or the milkmaids on May morning dancing
round the brave Garlands that they have gotten from the silversmiths in
Cranbourn Alley. She sat