to keep myself standing
upright.

"I suppose it's a case of threatening to have him up, and make him
settle it quietly for a pound or two? How much for me if you lay hold of
him?"

"Half."

I began to be afraid that he would suspect something if I was still
silent. The wretch's eyes twinkled again and he came yet closer.

"I drove him to the Red Lion, corner of Dodd Street and Rudgely Street.
The house was shut up, but he was let in at the jug and bottle door,
like a man who was known to the landlord. That's as much as I can tell
you, and I'm certain I'm right. He was the last fare I took up at night.
The next morning master gave me the sack--said I cribbed his corn and
his fares. I wish I had."

I gathered from this that the crook-backed man had been a cab-driver.

"Why don't you speak?" he asked, suspiciously. "Has she been telling you
a pack of lies about me? What did she say when she came home?"

"What ought she to have said?"

"She ought to have said my fare was drunk, and she came in the way as
he was going to get into the cab. That's what she ought to have said to
begin with."

"But after?"

"Well, after, my fare, by way of larking with her, puts out his leg for
to trip her up, and she stumbles and catches at me for to save herself,
and tears off one of the limp ends of my rotten old tie. 'What do you
mean by that, you brute?' says she, turning round as soon as she was
steady on her legs, to my fare. Says my fare to her: 'I means to teach
you to keep a civil tongue in your head.' And he ups with his fist,
and--what's come to you, now? What are you looking at me like that for?
How do you think a man of my size was to take her part against a man big
enough to have eaten me up? Look as much as you like, in my place you
would have done what I done--drew off when he shook his fist at you,
and swore he'd be the death of you if you didn't start your horse in no
time."

I saw he was working himself up into a rage; but I could not, if my life
had depended on it, have stood near him or looked at him any longer.
I just managed to stammer out that I had been walking a long way, and
that, not being used to much exercise, I felt faint and giddy with
fatigue. He only changed from angry to sulky when I made that excuse. I
got a little further away from him, and then added that if he would be
at the Mews entrance the next evening I should have something more to
say and something more to give him. He grumbled a few