hotel in the town. Read
what he says.'

'Very well,' said Martin, glancing over it with his customary coolness;
'much obliged to him. I'm agreeable.'

Tom could have wished him to be a little more astonished, a little more
pleased, or in some form or other a little more interested in such a
great event. But he was perfectly self-possessed; and falling into his
favourite solace of whistling, took another turn at the grammar-school,
as if nothing at all had happened.

Mr Pecksniff's horse being regarded in the light of a sacred animal,
only to be driven by him, the chief priest of that temple, or by some
person distinctly nominated for the time being to that high office by
himself, the two young men agreed to walk to Salisbury; and so, when the
time came, they set off on foot; which was, after all, a better mode of
travelling than in the gig, as the weather was very cold and very dry.

Better! A rare strong, hearty, healthy walk--four statute miles an
hour--preferable to that rumbling, tumbling, jolting, shaking, scraping,
creaking, villanous old gig? Why, the two things will not admit of
comparison. It is an insult to the walk, to set them side by side. Where
is an instance of a gig having ever circulated a man's blood, unless
when, putting him in danger of his neck, it awakened in his veins and in
his ears, and all along his spine, a tingling heat, much more peculiar
than agreeable? When did a gig ever sharpen anybody's wits and energies,
unless it was when the horse bolted, and, crashing madly down a steep
hill with a stone wall at the bottom, his desperate circumstances
suggested to the only gentleman left inside, some novel and unheard-of
mode of dropping out behind? Better than the gig!

The air was cold, Tom; so it was, there was no denying it; but would
it have been more genial in the gig? The blacksmith's fire burned very
bright, and leaped up high, as though it wanted men to warm; but would
it have been less tempting, looked at from the clammy cushions of a gig?
The wind blew keenly, nipping the features of the hardy wight who fought
his way along; blinding him with his own hair if he had enough to it,
and wintry dust if he hadn't; stopping his breath as though he had been
soused in a cold bath; tearing aside his wrappings-up, and whistling in
the very marrow of his bones; but it would have done all this a hundred
times more fiercely to a man in a gig, wouldn't it? A fig for gigs!

Better than the gig! Wh