ch-top, and sets him on his legs, and
they stump off into the bar, and join the coachman and the other outside
passengers.

Here a fresh-looking barmaid serves them each with a glass of early purl
as they stand before the fire, coachman and guard exchanging business
remarks. The purl warms the cockles of Tom's heart, and makes him cough.

"Rare tackle, that, sir, of a cold morning," says the coachman, smiling.
"Time's up." They are out again and up; coachee the last, gathering the
reins into his hands and talking to Jem the ostler about the mare's
shoulder, and then swinging himself up on to the box--the horses dashing
off in a canter before he falls into his seat. Toot-toot-tootle-too goes
the horn, and away they are again, five-and-thirty miles on their road
(nearly half way to Rugby, thinks Tom), and the prospect of breakfast at
the end of the stage.

And now they begin to see, and the early life of the country-side comes
out; a market cart or two, men in smock-frocks going to their work pipe
in mouth, a whiff of which is no bad smell this bright morning. The sun
gets up, and the mist shines like silver gauze. They pass the hounds
jogging along to a distant meet, at the heels of the huntsman's hack,
whose face is about the colour of the tails of his old pink, as he
exchanges greetings with coachman and guard. Now they pull up at a
lodge, and take on board a well-muffled-up sportsman, with his gun-case
and carpet-bag. An early up-coach meets them, and the coachmen gather up
their horses, and pass one another with the accustomed lift of the
elbow, each team doing eleven miles an hour, with a mile to spare behind
if necessary. And here comes breakfast.

"Twenty minutes here, gentlemen," says the coachman as they pull up at
half-past seven at the inn door.

Have we not endured nobly this morning, and is not this a worthy reward
for much endurance? There is the low dark wainscoted room hung with
sporting prints; the hat-stand (with a whip or two standing up in it
belonging to bagmen who are still snug in bed) by the door; the blazing
fire, with the quaint old glass over the mantelpiece, in which is stuck
a large card with the list of the meets for the week of the county
hounds. The table covered with the whitest of cloths and of china, and
bearing a pigeon-pie, ham, round of cold boiled beef cut from a mammoth
ox, and the great loaf of household bread on a wooden trencher. And here
comes in the stout head waiter, puf