ing at his finger. This was, I suppose, understood by all the
company as an invitation to ask the time of the day, but no body
appeared to heed his overture; and his desire to be talking so far
overcame his resentment, that he let us know of his own accord that it
was past five, and that in two hours we should be at breakfast.

His condescension was thrown away; we continued all obdurate; the
ladies held up their heads; I amused myself with watching their
behaviour; and of the other two, one seemed to employ himself in
counting the trees as we drove by them, the other drew his hat over
his eyes and counterfeited a slumber. The man of benevolence, to shew
that he was not depressed by our neglect, hummed a tune and beat time
upon his snuff-box.

Thus universally displeased with one another, and not much delighted
with ourselves, we came at last to the little inn appointed for our
repast; and all began at once to recompense themselves for the
constraint of silence, by innumerable questions and orders to the
people that attended us. At last, what every one had called for was
got, or declared impossible to be got at that time, and we were
persuaded to sit round the same table; when the gentleman in the red
surtout looked again upon his watch, told us that we had half an hour
to spare, but he was sorry to see so little merriment among us; that
all fellow travellers were for the time upon the level, and that it
was always his way to make himself one of the company. "I remember,"
says he, "it was on just such a morning as this, that I and my lord
Mumble and the duke of Tenterden were out upon a ramble: we called at
a little house as it might be this; and my landlady, I warrant you,
not suspecting to whom she was talking, was so jocular and facetious,
and made so many merry answers to our questions, that we were all
ready to burst with laughter. At last the good woman happening to
overhear me whisper the duke and call him by his title, was so
surprised and confounded that we could scarcely get a word from her;
and the duke never met me from that day to this, but he talks of the
little house, and quarrels with me for terrifying the landlady."

He had scarcely had time to congratulate himself on the veneration
which this narrative must have procured him from the company, when one
of the ladies having reached out for a plate on a distant part of the
table, began to remark the inconveniences of travelling, and the
difficulty whic