ards Lawless, "and Mrs. Mildman gave us
some very nice tea, which soon restored me."

"Well, I'm glad they managed to make you comfortable among them,"
observed Dr. Mildman, turning over his papers and books, preparatory to
beginning the morning's study.

"Hadn't you better ask him when he expects the sofa will be down?"
suggested Coleman to Oaklands, in a whisper.

"No, you jackanapes," was the reply, "and don't you make me laugh when
that old gentleman is in the room, for there's nothing more fatiguing
than the attempt to smother a laugh."

Coleman's only answer to this, if answer it could be called, was a
grimace, which had the desired effect of throwing Oaklands into a fit of
laughter, which he found it very hard labour indeed to stifle; nor had
his countenance quite recovered from the effects of his exertions, when
he was summoned to the Doctor's table to undergo an examination similar
to that which had appeared so formidable to me a few days before; and
thus terminated the notable adventure of the carter's frock, though I
~62~~observed that after a week or two had elapsed the Macintosh was
handed over to Thomas, and Smithson was called upon to tax his inventive
powers to furnish Lawless with a less questionably shaped garment of the
same material.

A few days after this, as I was walking with Coleman, he suddenly
exclaimed:--

"Well, of all the antediluvian affairs I ever beheld, the old fellow
now coming towards us is the queerest; he looks like a fossil edition
of Methuselah, dug up and modernised some hundred years ago at the very
least. Holloa! he's going mad I believe; I hope he does not bite."

The subject of these somewhat uncomplimentary remarks was a little old
gentleman in a broad-brimmed white hat, turned up with green, and a
black cloth spencer (an article much like a boy's jacket exaggerated),
from beneath which protruded the very broad tails of a blue coat, with
rather more than their proper complement of bright brass buttons, while
drab gaiters and shorts completed the costume.

The moment, however, I beheld the countenance of the individual in
question, I recognised the never-to-be-mistaken mole at the tip of
the nose of my late coach companion to London. The recognition seemed
mutual, for no sooner did he perceive me than he stopped short, and
pointed straight at me with a stout silver-mounted bamboo which he held
in his hand, uttering a sonorous "Umph!" as he did so; to which somewhat
u