dy; whilst Mr. Holt, as Esmond saw from his place on the step,
sank back with rather an alarmed face, crying out to her ladyship, "For
God's sake, madam, do not speak or look out of window, sit still." But she
did not obey this prudent injunction of the father; she thrust her head
out of the coach window, and screamed out to the coachman, "Flog your way
through them, the brutes, James, and use your whip!"

The mob answered with a roaring jeer of laughter, and fresh cries of,
"Jezebel! Jezebel!" My lord only laughed the more: he was a languid
gentleman: nothing seemed to excite him commonly, though I have seen him
cheer and halloo the hounds very briskly, and his face (which was
generally very yellow and calm) grow quite red and cheerful during a burst
over the Downs after a hare, and laugh, and swear, and huzza at a
cockfight, of which sport he was very fond. And now, when the mob began to
hoot his lady, he laughed with something of a mischievous look, as though
he expected sport, and thought that she and they were a match.

James the coachman was more afraid of his mistress than the mob, probably,
for he whipped on his horses as he was bidden, and the postboy that rode
with the first pair (my lady always went with her coach-and-six) gave a
cut of his thong over the shoulders of one fellow who put his hand out
towards the leading horse's rein.

It was a market day and the country people were all assembled with their
baskets of poultry, eggs, and such things; the postilion had no sooner
lashed the man who would have taken hold of his horse, but a great cabbage
came whirling like a bombshell into the carriage, at which my lord laughed
more, for it knocked my lady's fan out of her hand, and plumped into
Father Holt's stomach. Then came a shower of carrots and potatoes.

"For heaven's sake be still!" says Mr. Holt; "we are not ten paces from
the 'Bell' archway, where they can shut the gates on us, and keep out this
_canaille_."

The little page was outside the coach on the step, and a fellow in the
crowd aimed a potato at him, and hit him in the eye, at which the poor
little wretch set up a shout; the man laughed, a great big saddler's
apprentice of the town. "Ah! you d---- little yelling Popish bastard," he
said, and stooped to pick up another; the crowd had gathered quite between
the horses and in the inn door by this time, and the coach was brought to
a dead standstill. My lord jumped as briskly as a boy out of the do