prettily crouched up on her box in a corner;
and so, with the Tinker among his pots and kettles, the Welsh Captain
and his lady on sundry bundles of rags, the sickly child in a basket,
the Tinker's dog curled up in his Master's hat, I tossing on the straw,
and a great rout of crates of crockery, rolls of cloth, tea and sugar,
and other London merchandize, which the wagoner was taking down West, as
a return cargo for the eggs, poultry, butcher's meat, and green stuff
that he had brought up, made altogether such a higgledypiggledy that you
do not often see in these days, when Servant-maids come up by Coach--my
service to them!--and disdain the Wagon, and his Worship the Captain
wears a fine laced coat and a cockade in his hat,--who but he!--and
travels post.

The maid who was bound on a visit to her Grandmother was, I rejoice to
admit, most tenderly kind to me. She combed my hair, and wiped away the
tears that besmirched my face. When the Wagon halted at the King's Arms,
Kensington, she tripped down and brought me a flagon of new milk with
some peppermint in it; and she told me stories all the way to Hounslow,
and bade me mind my book, and be a good child, and that Angels would
love me. Likewise that she was being courted by a Pewterer in Panyer
Alley, who had parted a bright sixpence with her--she showed me her
token, drawn from her modest bodice, and who had passed his word to Wed,
if he had to take to the Road for the price of the Ring--but that was
only his funning, she said,--or if she were forced even to run away from
her Mistress, and make a Fleet Match of it. It was little, in good
sooth, that I knew about courtships or Love-tokens or Fleet Matches; but
I believe that a woman, for want of a better gossip, would open her
Love-budget to a Baby or a Blind Puppy, and I listened so well that she
kissed me ere we parted, and gave me a pocketful of cheese-cakes.

It was quite night, and far beyond Hounslow, when I was dozing off into
happy sleep again, that the Wagon came to a dead stop, and I awoke in
great fright at the sound of a harsh voice asking if the Boy Jack was
there. I was the "Boy Jack:" and the Wagoner, coming to the after-part
of the tilt with his lantern, pulled me from among the straw with far
less ado than if I had been the Tinker's dog.

I was set down on the ground before a tall man with a long face and an
ugly little scratch wig, who had large boots with straps over his thighs
like a Farmer, and swa