injured ribs!
But come--jump up--where's your nag? Binjimin, you blackguard, where are
you? The fog is blinding me, I declare! Binjimin, I say! Binjimin! you
willain, where are you?"

"Here, sir! coming!" responded a voice from the bottom of one of the
long mugs at a street breakfast stall, which the fog almost concealed
from their view, and presently an urchin in a drab coat and blue collar
came towing a wretched, ewe-necked, hungry-looking, roan rosinante along
from where he had been regaling himself with a mug of undeniable bohea,
sweetened with a composition of brown sugar and sand.

"Now be after getting up," said Jorrocks, "for time and the Surrey
'ounds wait for no man. That's not a werry elegant tit, but still
it'll carry you to Croydon well enough, where I'll put you on a most
undeniable bit of 'orse-flesh--a reg'lar clipper. That's a hack--what
they calls three-and-sixpence a side, but I only pays half a crown.
Now, Binjimin, cut away home, and tell Batsay to have dinner ready at
half-past five to a minute, and to be most particular in doing the lamb
to a turn."

The Yorkshireman having adjusted himself in the old flat-flapped hack
saddle, and got his stirrups let out from "Binjimin's" length to his
own, gathered up the stiff, weather-beaten reins, gave the animal a
touch with his spurs, and fell into the rear of Mr. Jorrocks. The
morning appeared to be getting worse. Instead of the grey day-dawn of
the country, when the thin transparent mist gradually rises from the
hills, revealing an unclouded landscape, a dense, thick, yellow fog
came rolling in masses along the streets, obscuring the gas lights, and
rendering every step one of peril. It could be both eat and felt, and
the damp struck through their clothes in the most summary manner. "This
is bad," said Mr. Jorrocks, coughing as he turned the corner by Drury
Lane, making for Catherine Street, and upset an early breakfast and
periwinkle stall, by catching one corner of the fragile fabric with his
toe, having ridden too near to the pavement. "Where are you for now? and
bad luck to ye, ye boiled lobster!" roared a stout Irish wench, emerging
from a neighbouring gin-palace on seeing the dainty viands rolling in
the street. "Cut away!" cried Jorrocks to his friend, running his horse
between one of George Stapleton's dust-carts and a hackney-coach, "or
the Philistines will be upon us." The fog and crowd concealed them,
but "Holloa! mind where you're going, y