st, the coach
drove away which had brought the others, and I was about to get on the
box and follow; observing, however, two more chaises driving up, I
thought I would be in no hurry, so I just led my horses and chaise a
little out of the way, and pretending to be occupied about the harness, I
kept a tolerably sharp look-out at the new arrivals. Well, partner, the
next vehicle that drove up was a gentleman's carriage which I knew very
well, as well as those within it, who were a father and son, the father a
good kind of old gentleman, and a justice of the peace, therefore not
very wise, as you may suppose; the son a puppy who has been abroad, where
he contrived to forget his own language, though only nine months absent,
and now rules the roast over his father and mother, whose only child he
is, and by whom he is thought wondrous clever. So this foreigneering
chap brings his poor old father to this out-of-the-way house to meet
these Platitudes and petty-larceny villains, and perhaps would have
brought his mother too, only, simple thing, by good fortune she happens
to be laid up with the rheumatiz. Well, the father and son, I beg pardon
I mean the son and father, got down and went in, and then after their
carriage was gone, the chaise behind drove up, in which was a huge fat
fellow, weighing twenty stone at least, but with something of a foreign
look, and with him--who do you think? Why, a rascally Unitarian
minister, that is, a fellow who had been such a minister, but who some
years ago leaving his own people, who had bred him up and sent him to
their college at York, went over to the High Church, and is now, I
suppose, going over to some other church, for he was talking, as he got
down, wondrous fast in Latin, or what sounded something like Latin, to
the fat fellow, who appeared to take things wonderfully easy, and merely
grunted to the dog Latin which the scoundrel had learned at the expense
of the poor Unitarians at York. So they went into the house, and
presently arrived another chaise, but ere I could make any further
observations, the porter of the out-of-the-way house came up to me,
asking what I was stopping there for? bidding me go away, and not pry
into other people's business. 'Pretty business,' said I to him, 'that is
being transacted in a place like this,' and then I was going to say
something uncivil, but he went to attend to the new-comers, and I took
myself away on my own business as he bade me, not,