“The doctor examined ’em, and only said what every one could see plain enough, but he says as well that they’d been gone hours; and that we didn’t know.

“Then he gives a sniff or two, and says as there’s a strong smell of acid about. ‘Is there any cup or bottle anywhere?’ he says.

“I gives a sorter jump, and felt my skin creep, for I recollects the bottle and glasses in the next room, and a cold shiver goes all down my back.

“How-so-be, I goes round and opens the folding doors, and shows the doctor the sherry decanter, which had about three glasses at the bottom.

“‘Ah!’ says he, taking the glassful as I poured out, holding it up to the light, and then sniffing it. ‘Ah,’ says he, ‘there’s more than enough for one in that glassful; and that seems to be the same,’ he says, smelling at the decanter. ‘Pour it in, pleeceman, and tie the stopper down, and seal it.’

“I takes up the glass and tries to pour it back, but if my hand didn’t shake to that degree that the glass chattered against the neck of the decanter, and I spilt half the stuff on the cloth, I was so scared at the escape I’d had.

“Well, sir, you see some one as won’t take no refusal had been beforehand with his warrant, and took both the forger and his lady, and I know I thought it a most awful affair, for I was rather new to such things then. But whether he poisoned her, or whether they’d agreed to it aforehand, nobody knew, not even the Coroner; but all I know is that never before, nor since, have I met with anything as upset me so much as finding them two poor things lying there in the dark – dead, and stiff, and stark; it upset me wonderful – at least, that and the sherry together.”

Chapter Twelve.
A Vulgar Tongue

Unfortunately, one cannot always get one’s own particular cabman – the favoured one of the civil tongue; and on more than one occasion I have been on the box with as surly a specimen of humanity as ever drove a horse. Now, decidedly the real way to enjoy a cab-ride – rather a difficult matter – is, providing the weather be fine, to mount beside the driver. You thus avoid musty smells, stifling symptoms, and that hideous noise of jangling windows, a sound harsh enough to jar the nerves of a bull. Yes; decidedly the best way to enjoy a cab-ride is to sink the bloated aristocrat, mount beside the driver, and fraternise.

But my surly driver would not fraternise, for he was of the class known as crusty. He was a sort of moral hedgehog, and, but for his forming a study, I should decidedly have abdicated.

“Ah! He’s got his gruel,” said my cynical friend as he drove past a fallen horse belonging to the General Omnibus Company. “There’s another fall in the kump’ny’s shares. Sarve ’em right. No bisniss to have such bad cattle.”

Now, the beast I sat behind was about as ill-favoured and lean-fleshed an animal as his master. Evidently given to wind-gall, spavin, and splint, he – the horse, not the driver – was to an unpractised eye decidedly a jibber; while even a female ear would have detected that he was a roarer. It was evident, though, that my friend could not detect the faults of his own steed, and therefore he lavished all his abuse upon the horses of his contemporaries, whether of cab or ’bus.

But this driver seemed to have a spite against the world at large; seeming to ooze all over until he broke out into quite a satirical perspiration, while his lips acted as a safety-valve to let off an explosive compound most rapidly formed in his interior. He had a snarl for everything and everybody, and could he have run over some unfortunate crossing-sweeper, he would probably have been in ecstasies. Whenever opportunity offered he snarled often and cruelly at the misfortunes of his fellow-creatures. Where the scavengers had left the scraped-up mud beside the road – and where don’t they? – he would drive right through, noisily and rapidly, forming a large mud firework – to the great increase of his after labour, certainly; but this seemed of no account; he was so amply recompensed by the intense gratification he enjoyed in besmirching as many passers-by as happened to be within range; while when he succeeded in producing a currant-dumpling appearance upon a footman’s calves, he was almost apoplectic, and rumbled with delight. Woe to the wandering dog that came within reach of his whip! It would have been better for him had he ne’er been pupped, for here there was no mercy shown. As to the passing salutations of brother cabs, they, though apparently pungent, glanced off our friend’s case-hardened composition, and the assailant would depart with a stinging sarcasm tingling and buzzing in his ears.

It was enough to make one ruminate upon the vast amount of the gall of bitterness in the man’s mind, and ask how much the cab-riding world had to do with the sharpening of the thorns with which this modern Jehu bristled – Jehu, indeed, for he drove most furiously – spiny, hooked, venomous, lacerating, clinging, tearing points that would have at you and be in your skin whether you would or no; for upon asking the fare when about to alight, having previously formed the determination not to dispute a sixpence, I was told “Two shillings,” and then, tendering a florin, was greeted with —

“Ho! wun o’ them blessed pieces. Should ha’ thought as a swell as purfessed to be so interested in kebs would ha’ been ashamed to horfer less than ’arf a bull.”

But there are amiable and advice-giving cabbies, who seem to take an interest in the welfare of their customers.

I once agreed in times gone by to “conwoy” Mrs Scribe and her sister, Miss Bellefille, as far as Richmond. ’Twas summer time, and our imaginations were full of sparkling rivers, green eyots, silver swans, and – well, yes, I’ll own it, the carnal delights of a Star and Garter dinner, with the following cigar. There was the rail, certainly, but in preference thereto I hired one of her Majesty’s carriages, VR 123,456. Our buttons had not come up in those days, so I fetched the vehicle from the stand, and rode back beside the driver. Upon reaching Miranda Villas, I lightly leaped down and rang the bell. Wonderful to relate, the ladies waited ready in the passage, and after handing them into the cab, I again mounted to the box, for the purpose of smoking upon the way down.

We were moving off when a voice was heard from the interior of the cab – “George, I’ve left my handkerchief upon the dressing-table; ask Harriet to fetch it down.”

I arrested the driver, who seemed to be regarding me rather superciliously, which I attributed to insignificance of appearance, when he exclaimed: —

“Now, Jarge, fetch the missus’s wipe, and look alive.”

“Confound his impudence,” I muttered, “he takes me for the attendant;” and then, with what must have been a decidedly melodramatic, tyrannical-baron-like scowl upon my brow, I resummoned the abigail, and obtained the required piece of cambric.

The feeling of indignation had fled as I reseated myself, and during the drive down I omitted the smoke, and suffered the driver to discourse fancy free.

He had an agreeable voice, had this Cabby – husky and wheezy; and but for an unpleasant habit of expectorating at the flies which settled upon the shafts, he might have proved an agreeable companion. Curiosity, however, seemed to be one of his failings, for addressing me in a mock provincial style as “Jarge,” and at the same time forcing his voice somewhere down into the cavernous recesses beneath his waistcoat, he began to catechise me after an approved method of his own.

“New hand?” – I nodded.

“Measured for your livery?”

“What?” I said.

“Measured for your harness – togs, you know?”

“Not yet,” I replied mildly – a martyr to information.

“Nice time on it, you fellers has: plenty ter eat, plenty ter drink, nothing ter do, and plenty o’ niste gals in the house. Got any guv’nor?”

I replied in the negative.

“Vell, then, young feller, you’ve put your foot into a good thing, and if you plays your cards right, you’ll make a swell of yourself in just no time. Reg’lar swell, you know; keep yer own wally, private barber, and shoeblack brigade, yer know, to keep you all square – some one to swear at when yer outer sorts. Ony think; have yer chockely brought to you in bed; and then come down arterwards in a red dressin’-gownd with gold flowers on it, and a fancy cap with a big torsel! And there yer sits, big as a Lord Mayor, and has yer breakfass outer chany. Ah, it’s a fine thing to be a swell, my lad! Arterwards yer goes out, fust chalk – all noo clothes – and when wun o’ us pore chaps says, ‘Keb, sir!’ ‘Yes!’ sez you, and you goes down to yer club and reads the papers, and drinks champagne all day till dinner-time, when yer goes back to dinner with the missus, and finishes off every night by going to the oprer. Swell’s life’s a first-rate ’un, my lad.

“Niste gals them missuses o’ yourn. I should stick up ter the little ’un if I was you.” (Mrs Scribe.) “I likes the looks on her. Can’t say much for t’other. She’s rayther too scraggy for my taste.” (Miss Bellefille.) “Howsumever, it depends a good deal on which has most ochre. Though, mind yer, I wouldn’t marry a gal altogether for her tin; I’d rayther hev a good-tempered fat ’un with six thousan’ than wun o’ yer thin, razor-backed, sour-tempered ’uns with twiste as much. Tain’t no use havin heaps o’ tin if yer can’t enjoy it and do what yer likes. There’s some chaps as I knows as is spliced and dursent say as their soul’s their own; and no more durst send out for a pot o’ porter than fly. Lor’ bless you, every drop o’ drink they swallers is ’lowanced out to ’em. Ony let the missus ketch ’em with the long clay and the backer, and then see how soon all the fat’s in the fire. Gets told as they makes the parly curtains smell wuss nor a tap-room, and keeps a buzzin’ about their ears till the pipe’s reg’lar put out, and them too, werry often.

“You take my adwice, young man, and don’t you go and throw yourself away. Don’t you go and make a martyr o’ yourself, and get a ring o’ bitter haloes round your head – sure sign o’ rain, you know, and the wife’s eyes a runnin’ over. I rather takes to that little ’un inside, though; she looks good-tempered. I s’pose she ain’t above five-and-twenty, is she?”

I said I believed that was her age.

“Good-tempered?” said Cabby; “don’t shy the bread about if it’s stale, or bully the gals, or any o’ them sorter games?”

“Oh, no!” I said.

“Vell, then; mind what you’re arter, and yer fortun’s made. You’ve got your hand crossed with the right bit o’ silver. I squinted over my left shoulder, and seed her a smilin’ at yer when yer brought her the handkercher. Eh? Ah! it’s all werry fine, yer know; but I’m up to yer, young feller. We see some life our way, you know. Nice artful card, you are, you know, now ain’t yer?”

Under the circumstances it seemed best to own to the soft impeachment, which I did, and removed my ribs from Cabby’s rather angular elbow.

“I say, yer know, bimeby, if yer look out, ’stead of ‘Jarge,’ it’ll be ‘Jarge, dear:’ ony don’t you be in too big a hurry – don’t you get a building a castle in the hair without putting any bricks under it, or else some fine morning down it comes atop of yer, and yer finds yerself flat on yer back with all the wind knocked out of yer corpus.”

Then came another facetious nudge of the elbow, almost forcible enough to produce the effect so graphically described.

“Play your cards well, my lad, and you’re a made man; but whatever you do, don’t be rash. Allus make a pint o’ cleanin’ yerself fust thing, and never show yourself to her with yer hair touzled and rough; and, what’s more, allus have a clean shave every morning, for there’s nothin’ a woman hates wus than a man with a rough chin – nayther one thing nor t’other. Arter a bit, some day, when she’s werry civil, and when she’s a-sayin’ ‘Jarge’ this or ‘Jarge’ that, you might, just by accident like, say ‘Yes, dear,’ or ‘No, dear,’ as the case may be; ony mind and see how she takes it; and, as I said afore, don’t be rash. Whatever you do, don’t touch her without she begins fust, or else it’s all dickey with yer. There’s many a good game been spoilt by young fellers like you bein’ too fast, and not havin’ nous enough to wait till the proper time.

“There’s another way, too, you might spoil yerself if yer don’t look out. Like all houses o’ your sort, there’s some niste gals downstairs, and noises allus goes uppards a deal easier than they goes down’ards. Don’t you never let nobody upstairs hear anybody downstairs a-saying, ‘Don’t Jarge!’ or ‘Do a’ done now!’ or ‘Such imperance!’ – you know, my lad, ony mind what I say: if them words downstairs is heered by any one upstairs, there won’t be a mossil o’ chance o’ them words upstairs bein’ heered downstairs. But there, I ain’t talkin’ to a flat. When we gets down ter Richmond, and your folks is gone into the Star and Garter, you’ll be standin’ a glass or two, and I can put you up to two or three wrinkles, every word of which you’ll be saving is worth five shillings to yer. Ah! I ony wish I’d half your chance; I’d be riding in a keb of my own before many months was over.

“The missuses a-goin’ to a dinner, of course? Ah, and a niste day for a dinner down there, and a row on the river arterwards. Goin’ to meet some gents, I s’pose? But never you mind that. Play your cards well, and you’ll be right, and can come down to Richmond once a week on your own hook. Don’t you be a-standin’ no nonsense, though, from some o’ them big swells all mustarsh and beard, with rings on their fingers. You’ll have some on ’em callin’ at your house and tryin’ it on, and wanting to cut you out: but you can dodge ’em by running up in the room when the bell didn’t ring, and a-going up with coals, and letters, and sich like; and if that don’t do – don’t let ’em go upstairs at all. The missus’ll thank yer for it arterwards, as it’s all for her good. And them young things is as ignorant as can be as to what’s best for them. I hain’t lived five-and-forty years in this world to learn nothing, I can tell yer. Let’s see, now, you’re about eight-and-twenty, you are, and don’t seem a bad sorter chap; but you’re too tame and quiet-like – looks as if you wus just come outer the country, don’t you see? But there, that’ll all come right in time I dersay.

“I say, you knows, send us a slice o’ cake when it comes off, my lad.”

Upon reaching the Star and Garter I told my Mentor to await our return; gave him a shilling to obtain the glass or two of which he had spoken; and after handing out the ladies, walked off with them to the tune of a low, but long-drawn whistle of astonishment from my self-constituted adviser.

I rode home inside, for the evening was damp and chilly; and upon paying the required tribute to my husky-voiced friend, he favoured me with a long serio-comic look beneath the lamp-post, and then upon placing one foot upon the wheel to reach his perch, he turned his head, winked solemnly and with a peculiar wisdom in his eye, and then Minerva Road knew him no more.

Chapter Thirteen.
From Real Life

“Co-o-o-o-me orn,” said Cabby, as we sat by his side on the box – “Co-o-o-me orn. Nice sorter day this here, sir. Thanky, sir; I do draw a bit, and never sez ‘no’ to a cigar. Arter you with the light, sir. ‘Queer fares,’ sir? Ah! I gets some queer sorter fares sometimes – rum ’uns. All sorts and sizes, as the sayin’ is. Taking a poor gal to Bedlam ain’t pleasant – they do screech so. Blest if I couldn’t ha’ pitched into the keeper sometimes when I’ve heerd the poor creetur crying out as she wasn’t mad, and beggin’ and praying of him to let her go. It all seems agin natur, ’ticklar when a fellow’s a bit soft-like. It’s now a year come Martlemas as one night a flunkey comes up to the stand and picks me out, and werry glad I was, for I’d had a awful bad day. I used to drive a mare then as I called ‘Bagged Sal,’ cos of her tail; for she hadn’t got no tail – leastwise, none to speak on. She’d been a ’tillery ’oss out in the Crimee – one of them as stood in the front rank and got all the hair nibbled off, and the roots gnawed so as to spile the cemetery for the future. But she could go, she could, and get over the ground differun to this. Coome orn, will yer; that ain’t nothing! That’s one of her games, sir. She pulls up short every now and then, if I ain’t watchin’ her, jest as if she wanted to pick up suthin’ in the road. Well, sir, as I was a-saying, flunkey seems to know a horse as could go, or else he wouldn’t ha’ choosed mine, for she worn’t at all ansum as you may suppose, besides bein’ a wherritty beast, allus twitchin’ her stump of a tail outer the crupper, and laying her ears back and biting. Flunkey hails me, and I pulls outer the rank and picks him up.

“‘Drive to Cavendish Square,’ sez he.

“Now, he wasn’t a reg’lar thoroughbred flunkey, all white gloves, stockings and powder, with a long cane and crestys on his buttons, but one o’ yer pepper-an’-salt doctor’s men, all white choker and cheek, and not arf so affable as a real footman. He was one of them chaps as keeps the patients waiting in the back parly till they tips him, and then he finds out all of a sudden as the doctor ain’t engaged. Lord, sir, I’ve waited hours in Saville-Row for poor innercent creeturs as didn’t know the wally of a trifle, and so spent a hextry five shillings in cab fare.

“‘Drive to Cavendish Square,’ sez he, as big as yer please and then he begins a-whistling, and a-staring at all the gals as we passes. My lord hadn’t a word to say to me, yer know, being only a kebby, and not up to his social spear in society; but I begins to pump him a little – movin’ the handle quite gentle like at first, for he wouldn’t suck a bit; but bimeby I works him round, and out flows such a bright stream of eloquence, and he begins to tell me where we was a-going to and who we was a-going to take; and then I finds as it was a young lady to a private asylum, for she was allus a-trying to kill herself, and all through love.

“Well, we pulls up at a door with a werry large brass plate, and the doctor’s name on it in big letters, and there I waited for half an hour; when the door opens and I hears a screech as goes through me like a knife, and then they carries out a young gal with a face a’most like an angel, only all drawed and frightened looking.

“The poor thing stares quite wild, first this way and then that way; calls out ‘Hernest – Hernest – help!’ and skreeked again as they pulled up the glasses of the keb, and then Pepper-and-salt jumps up alongside me, as it might be you, sir, and ‘Drive on fast,’ he says, ‘along ’Ammersmith Road to Chiswick’ – through Kensington, you know.

“Now, you know, sir, I’m blest if I know how I drove that arternoon. You see, sir, one gets knocked about here, and shoved there, and goes through lots o’ strange things to get a living; but I can’t help thinking as we’re all on us, gentle and simple, made alike, and outer the same stuff. Some on us, too, gets more than our share o’ temper, and softness, and fust one thing, and then another, and you see that’s how it is with me. I’m a rum-looking cove to look at, reg’lar rough one, you know, but then I’ve got a lot o’ softness stowed away about my heart as I ain’t no business with. Now I just ask you now, sir, as a fair judge, what business has a kebman with softness? It ain’t natural. Be as rough as you like, I says, but none o’ that. And yet my stoopid old woman at home she likes it, and says it’s natur. P’rhaps it is, and p’rhaps it ain’t. But then, you see, we don’t live in a state of natur now. Quartern loaves, pots o’ porter, and Dutch cheeses don’t grow on the hedges; and people has to look out precious sharp for enough to fill out their weskits, and I’ve known the time when mine’s been precious slack about the buttons. ’Pon my soul, sir – beggin’ your pardon for being a bit strong – you upper crusters ain’t no idea what shifts we’re put to sometimes for a living, and what hard work it is. I ain’t a grumbling, for only having the missus, and no children, things ain’t so hard as they might be. We gets along right enough, for the wife can scheme wonderfully, and toss you up a sixpenny dinner as would surprise yer. She’s up to a thing or two, an’ can go to first-class butchers and get her threepen’orth o’ pieces – topping meat, you know; twopen’orth o’ taters and some carrots and turnips; and, Lor’ bless you, you’d be surprised as I said afore. Did yer ever go down Leather Lane, sir, or past the Brill at Somers Town, or some parts of Clare and Newport Markets? Perhaps you didn’t. But jest you wait for a stinging hot day, and then go and see what the poor folks is a buying of; and then don’t you wonder no more about fevers, and choleras, and all them sort o’ troubles. There ain’t no wonder in the gin palaces going ahead, when so many poor creeturs flies to ’em to drown their sorrows. It’s this sorter thing as cheers me up; and makes me say a moral bit as I learnt – ‘A contented mind’s a continual feast,’ I says to the wife; and really, sir, if you’ll believe me, sooner than I’d live as some of our poor things does I’d try and peg on along with my old mare here. We’d make a subdivision: she should have the chaff, and I’d go in for the oats and beans.

“Now, where had I got to? Oh! I know, sir – about that there poor gal. I don’t know how I drove down that day for softness. It did seem so sad, so pitiful for that fine young creetur to be dragged off in that way. I quite hated mysen, for it was as though I was to do with it, and it was my fault; and at last, when we’d got up to that place where the chap used to hatch his young cocks and hens by steam – Cantelo, I think he called hisself – Pepper-and-Salt says, ‘Turn down here,’ and I turned down, and mighty glad I was when we got to the big old house, where they took the poor girl in, and I thinks to myself, ‘Ah! next time as you comes out, my lass, I’m afraid as it will be screwed down, and with the black welwet a hanging over you!’

“I got werry good pay for that job; but somehow it did not seem to lit, for the soft feeling as I told you of. Every bit o’ money seemed gritty, and I felt gritty, and as I drove Pepper-and-Salt back it was me as wouldn’t talk.

“I bought a haddick and took home to the old ooman for supper, and I toasted it myself, so as it shouldn’t be burnt; and then we had a pint o’ porter made hot, with some ginger and sugar in it; and as I was a-smoking my pipe and watching the haddick, I tells Betsy all about it. But, p’raps you mightn’t believe it, we didn’t enjoy that supper: I felt kinder lonesome like, and I see a big drop go off the missus’s nose more than once into the porter mug, as she sat a-rocking herself backwards and forwards.

“Ah! there’s some rum games a-going on in this here world, sir!”

We jogged on in silence for some little time, when “Hi!” roared Cabby at an old lady crossing the road – producing the excellent effect of making her stand still in the middle.

“I know some o’ them old women ’ll be the death o’ me some day,” said Cabby. “They allus waits till a keb’s a-coming afore they cross the road, and then when they gets knocked down there’s a fuss and a inquest, and a reglar bother, of course.

“Did you ever see one o’ them patent kebs as come up about five-and-twenty years ago? – I mean them with a door opening behind, and a box up in front for the driver. Niste things they was for swindling a poor cove out of his hard-earned suffrins. More nor wunst I’ve had people a-slipping out without stopping on me, and, of course, when I pulls up, if the keb wasn’t empty. Begging of your pardon, sir, it was enough to make a saint swear.

“Coome orn, will yer? Arter you, sir, with the light agen; talking let’s one’s weed out more nor anything. Rum fellows them sailors, sir; there goes two with the name of their ship on their hats, like dogs with their master’s name on their collar. Rum dogs, too – British bulldogs. They ain’t no notion at all o’ what money’s worth; they seem to fancy as it’s only meant to spend – never thinks a bit about saving of it. I took one up wunst at London Bridge, and I opens the door for him, and touches my hat quite civil, for I allus does that to a fare, whosumever he be. Mighty pleased he seemed, too, for he pulls out a tanner – what you calls a tizzy, you know, sir – and he hands it over, and he says —

“‘Give’s hold o’ the rudder-lines, mate, and fetch a glass o’ grog to drink afore sailing.’ And then he gets hold of the reins, and I fetches a glass of rum-and-water, and we drinks it fair atween us; and when I holds the door open agen, he pitches his bundle inside. ‘Clap on the hatches,’ he says, and he bangs to the door, and then, while I was a-staring, up he goes, and put hisself plop atop o’ the roof, for all the world like a tailor, and there he began a-chewing his bacca. ‘Deck’s clear, mate,’ he says, ‘clap on sail;’ and away we goes along Cheapside, and the boys a-cheering and hooraying like all that.

“We hadn’t gone werry far before he ’ails me to stop, and then we has another glass o’ rum-and-water. And so we goes on and on, making no end o’ calls, till at last we must both have been in a werry reprehensible state, sir; for all I remembers is waking up at four o’clock in the morning in our mews, with the horse’s head as far into the stable as he could get it, and the sailor a-sitting fast asleep on the t’other cushion inside the keb just opposite to me. But then, you see, sailors is such rum chaps!

“Law, sir, it’s wonderful the dodges as I’ve seen in my time. People’s beginning to find out as there’s some romance in a keb now, since that chap pisoned his wife and two children in one of our wehicles ‘licensed to carry four persons’ – and then went and did for hissen. He was a bad ’un, reg’lar. I wunst had a case of that sort myself. I remember it as well as if it was only yesterday, and it’s many a year ago now. That was a night, surety – all rain and sleet mixed up, and the roads churned into a pudge – City batter, I calls it. I was on night-work, a-sitting on my box, driving about anyveres, noveres like, for it was too cold for the hoss to stand still. P’raps I shouldn’t ha’ got him on again, for he’d ha’ turned stiff. I’d been a-growling to myself like that I should have to be out on such a night, and was then twisting of an old red ’ankercher round the brim o’ my hat, to keep the rain from running down, when a street door opens, and a woman comes running out with a man arter her.

“‘Come in,’ he says, a-trying to drag her back; but she hangs away, calling out ‘Help!’ and says suthin’ about ‘willain,’ and ‘baseness,’ and ‘never.’ I couldn’t ’ear all she says ’acause of the wind, though I pulls up short in front of the house: a large one it was, with a light in the hall, and I could see as the man was quite a swell, in a bobtail coat and open wesket – same as they wears to go to the Hoprer. Well, when she acts like that he makes no more ado but fetches her a wipe across the mouth with his hand, quite savage – I mean hits her – and then runs in and bangs the door arter him, leaving that poor thing out in the bitter night, in a low dress, and without a bit of bonnet.

“She gives a sort of ketch or sob like, and then says to me, in an ordering sorter way —

“‘Open the door, man!’

“I jumps down in a minute, and she gets in and tells me to drive to a street near Eaton Square. So I shuts the door and drives off, wondering what it all meant, and feeling uncommonly as if I should have liked to give that feller one for hisself, for it was a thing I never could bear to see, any one strike a woman.

“Well, we gets to the street, and then I turns round to arst her the number, when just as we passed a lamp-post I could see in at the window as she was down on the floor. You might have knocked me off the box with a wisp.

“I pulls short up, jumps down, and opens the door; and there she was with her hair down, and all of a heap like at the bottom of the keb. The light shined well in, and as I lifted her on to the seat I could see as she was young, and good-looking, and well dressed, and with a thick gold chain round her neck.

“Just then up comes a p’leeceman, as big as you please, and ‘What’s up?’ he says. ‘Why, she’s fainted,’ I says.

“‘Looks suspicious,’ he says, a-hying me sideways.

“‘P’raps it does,’ I says, for I began to feel nasty at his aggrawating suspicions. Howsomever, I tells him then where I’d picked her lip, and all the rest of it, and he looked ’nation knowing for a minute, and then he says —

“‘Jump up and drive to the nearest doctor’s; and I’ll get in and hold her up.’ ‘But what’s this here?’ he says, laying hold of her hand – such a little white ’un, with rings on, and with the fingers tight round a little bottle. ‘Drive on,’ he shouts, quite fierce, an’ I bangs to the door, and forgot all about the wet.

“I soon comes across one o’ them red brandy balls a-sticking in a lamp, and I says to myself, ‘That’s English for salts and senny,’ I says; and then I pulls up, ketches hold of surgery and night bell, and drags away like fun.

“Then the door was opened, and we carried her in – no weight, bless you – and lays her on the sofy. Doctor comes in his dressing-gown, takes hold of her hand, holds it a minute, and then lets it fall again. Then he holds his watch-case to her mouth, and you could hear the thing go ‘tic-tic’ quite loud, for there wasn’t another sound in the room; and then he lifts up one of her eyelids, and you could see her great black eye a-staring all wild and awful like, as if she was seeing something in the other world. Then all at once she gave a sort of shivering sigh, and I could see that it was all over.

“Doctor takes the bottle from the p’leeceman, smells it, shakes his head, and gives it back again. Then they two has a talk together, and it ends in us lifting the poor thing back into the keb, and me driving back to where we started from; p’leeceman taking care to ride on the box this time. And what a set out there was when we got there! Fust comes the suvvant, after we’d been ringing a’most half an hour. She looked as if just shook out of bed; and there she stood, with her eyes half-shut, a-shiverin’ and starin’, with the door-chain up. As soon as we made her understand what was the matter, off she cuts; and then down comes the swell in his dressen-gownd. Fust he runs out and looks in the keb; then he rushes upstairs again; then there was a dreadful skreeching, and a lady comes a-tearing down in her night-gownd, and with her hair all a-flying. We’d carried the poor thing into the hall then, and she throws herself on her, shrieking out, ‘I’ve killed her! I’ve killed her!’ kissing her frantic-like all the time. The swell had come down after her, looking as white as a sheet; and he gets the lady away, while p’leeceman and me carries my fare into a bedroom.