g the caravan from time to time with an air of
calm delight, and deriving particular gratification from the red panels
and the brass knocker. When she had taken this gentle exercise for
some time, she sat down upon the steps and called 'George'; whereupon a
man in a carter's frock, who had been so shrouded in a hedge up to this
time as to see everything that passed without being seen himself,
parted the twigs that concealed him, and appeared in a sitting
attitude, supporting on his legs a baking-dish and a half-gallon stone
bottle, and bearing in his right hand a knife, and in his left a fork.

'Yes, Missus,' said George.

'How did you find the cold pie, George?'

'It warn't amiss, mum.'

'And the beer,' said the lady of the caravan, with an appearance of
being more interested in this question than the last; 'is it passable,
George?'

'It's more flatterer than it might be,' George returned, 'but it an't
so bad for all that.'

To set the mind of his mistress at rest, he took a sip (amounting in
quantity to a pint or thereabouts) from the stone bottle, and then
smacked his lips, winked his eye, and nodded his head. No doubt with
the same amiable desire, he immediately resumed his knife and fork, as
a practical assurance that the beer had wrought no bad effect upon his
appetite.

The lady of the caravan looked on approvingly for some time, and then
said,

'Have you nearly finished?'

'Wery nigh, mum.' And indeed, after scraping the dish all round with
his knife and carrying the choice brown morsels to his mouth, and after
taking such a scientific pull at the stone bottle that, by degrees
almost imperceptible to the sight, his head went further and further
back until he lay nearly at his full length upon the ground, this
gentleman declared himself quite disengaged, and came forth from his
retreat.

'I hope I haven't hurried you, George,' said his mistress, who appeared
to have a great sympathy with his late pursuit.

'If you have,' returned the follower, wisely reserving himself for any
favourable contingency that might occur, 'we must make up for it next
time, that's all.'

'We are not a heavy load, George?'

'That's always what the ladies say,' replied the man, looking a long
way round, as if he were appealing to Nature in general against such
monstrous propositions. 'If you see a woman a driving, you'll always
perceive that she never will keep her whip still; the horse can't go
fast enough for her.