"Oh, the deuce!--did that old devil catch you?" inquired Nimrod.

"Vot, do you know her?"

"Know her! ay--everybody here knows her with her black boy. She's always
on the road, and lives now by the flats she catches between Paris and
the coast. She was an agent for Morison's Pills--but having a fractious
Scotch lodger that she couldn't get out, she physicked him so dreadfully
that he nearly died, and the police took her licence away. But you are
hungry, Mr. Jorrocks, come to my house and spend the evening, and tell
me all about your travels."

Mr. Stubbs objected to this proposition, having just learned that the
London packet sailed in an hour, so the trio adjourned to Mr. Roberts's,
Royal Hotel, where over some strong eau-de-vie they cemented their
acquaintance, and Mr. Jorrocks, finding that Nimrod was to be in England
the following week, insisted upon his naming a day for dining in Great
Coram Street.

"Permits" to embark having been considerately granted "gratis" by the
Government for a franc apiece, at the hour of ten our travellers stepped
on board, and Mr. Jorrocks, having wrapped himself up in his martial
cloak, laid down in the cabin and, like Ulysses in Ithaca, as Nimrod
would say, "arrived in London Asleep."

XI. A RIDE TO BRIGHTON ON "THE AGE"

_(In a very "Familiar Letter" to Nimrod)_

DEAR NIMROD,

You have favoured myself, and the sporting world at large, with a werry
rich high-flavoured account of the great Captain Barclay, and his
extonishing coach, the "Defiance"; and being werry grateful to you for
that and all other favours, past, present, and to come, I take up my
grey goose quill to make it "obedient to my will," as Mr. Pope, the
poet, says, in relating a werry gratifying ride I had on the celebrated
"Brighton Age," along with Sir Wincent Cotton, Bart., and a few other
swells. Being, as you knows, of rather an emigrating disposition, and
objecting to make a nick-stick of my life by marking down each Christmas
Day over roast-beef and plum pudding, cheek-by-jowl with Mrs. J----
at home, I said unto my lad Binjimin--and there's not a bigger rogue
unhung--"Binjimin, be after looking out my Sunday clothes, and run down
to the Regent Circus, and book me the box-seat of the 'Age,' for
I'm blow'd if I'm not going to see the King at Brighton (or
'London-sur-Mary,' as James Green calls it), and tell the pig-eyed
book-keeper it's for Mr. Jorrocks, and you'll be sure to get it."

Accordingly,