All right behind? Sit tight!" Hist! off we go by
St. Mertain's Church into the Strand, to the booking-office there.

The streets were werry full, but Sir Wincent wormed his way among the
coal-wagons, wans, busses, coaches, bottom-over-tops,--in wulgar French,
"cow sur tate," as they calls the new patent busses--trucks, cabs, &c.,
in a marvellous workmanlike manner, which seemed the more masterly,
inasmuch as the leaders, having their heads at liberty, poked them about
in all directions, all a mode Francey, just as they do in Paris. At the
Marsh gate we were stopped. A black job was going through on one side,
and a haw-buck had drawn a great yellow one 'oss Gravesend cruelty wan
into the other, and was fumbling for his coin.

"Now, Young Omnibus!" cried Sir Wincent, "don't be standing there all
day." The man cut into his nag, but the brute was about beat. "There,
don't 'it him so 'ard (hard)," said Sir Wincent, "or you may hurt him!"

When we got near the Helephant and Castle, Timothy Odgkinson, of Brixton
Hill, a low, underselling grocer, got his measly errand cart, with his
name and address in great staring white letters, just in advance of the
leaders, and kept dodging across the road to get the sound ground,
for the whole line was werry "woolley" as you calls it. "Come, Mister
independent grocer! go faster if you can," cries Sir Wincent, "though I
think you have bought your horse where you buy your tea, for he's werry
sloe." A little bit farther on a chap was shoving away at a truck full
of market-baskets. "Now, Slavey," said he, "keep out of my way!" At the
Helephant and Castle, and, indeed, wherever he stopped, there were lots
of gapers assembled to see the Baronet coachman, but Sir Wincent never
minded them, but bustled about with his way-bill, and shoved in his
parcels, fish-baskets, and oyster-barrels like a good 'un. We pulled up
to grub at the Feathers at Merstham, and 'artily glad I was, for I was
far on to famish, having ridden whole twenty-five miles in a cold,
frosty air without morsel of wittles of any sort. When the Bart. pulled
up, he said, "Now, ladies and gentlemen--twenty minutes allowed here,
and let me adwise you to make the most of it." I took the 'int, and heat
away like a regular bagman, who can always dispatch his ducks and green
peas in ten minutes.

We started again, and about one hundred yards below the pike stood a lad
with a pair of leaders to clap on, for the road, as I said before, was