icate to appear
at a public table generally carry a supply of gingerbread, biscuits and
cheese, cold ham, and other light refreshments, merely to sustain
nature to the journey's end. Such airy diet will sometimes keep them in
pretty good flesh for a week together. Laying hold of this same little
basket, I thrust my hand under the newspaper with which it was
carefully covered.

"What's this, my dear?" cried I; for the black neck of a bottle had
popped out of the basket.

"A bottle of Kalydor, Mr. Bullfrog," said my wife, coolly taking the
basket from my hands and replacing it on the front seat.

There was no possibility of doubting my wife's word; but I never knew
genuine Kalydor, such as I use for my own complexion, to smell so much
like cherry brandy. I was about to express my fears that the lotion
would injure her skin, when an accident occurred which threatened more
than a skin-deep injury. Our Jehu had carelessly driven over a heap of
gravel and fairly capsized the coach, with the wheels in the air and
our heels where our heads should have been. What became of my wits I
cannot imagine; they have always had a perverse trick of deserting me
just when they were most needed; but so it chanced, that in the
confusion of our overthrow I quite forgot that there was a Mrs.
Bullfrog in the world. Like many men's wives, the good lady served her
husband as a steppingstone. I had scrambled out of the coach and was
instinctively settling my cravat, when somebody brushed roughly by me,
and I heard a smart thwack upon the coachman's ear.

"Take that, you villain!" cried a strange, hoarse voice. "You have
ruined me, you blackguard! I shall never be the woman I have been!"

And then came a second thwack, aimed at the driver's other ear; but
which missed it, and hit him on the nose, causing a terrible effusion
of blood. Now, who or what fearful apparition was inflicting this
punishment on the poor fellow remained an impenetrable mystery to me.
The blows were given by a person of grisly aspect, with a head almost
bald, and sunken cheeks, apparently of the feminine gender, though
hardly to be classed in the gentler sex. There being no teeth to
modulate the voice, it had a mumbled fierceness, not passionate, but
stern, which absolutely made me quiver like calf's-foot jelly. Who
could the phantom be? The most awful circumstance of the affair is yet
to be told: for this ogre, or whatever it was, had a riding habit like
Mrs. Bullfrog'