There Was A Man In A High Hat And Red Coat, Who Was Blowing A
Horn As The Thing Came
Around the corner, and just as I was looking
into the coach and thinking we'd have it all to ourselves,
For there
was nobody in it, he put a ladder up against the top, and says he,
touching his hat, "There's a seat for you, madam, right next the
coachman, and one just behind for the gentleman. 'Tain't often that, on
a fine morning like this, such seats as them is left vacant on account
of a sudden case of croup in a baronet's family."
I looked at the ladder and I looked at that top front seat, and I tell
you, madam, I trembled in every pore, but I remembered then that all
the respectable seats was on top, and the farther front the nobbier,
and as there was a young woman sitting already on the box-seat, I made
up my mind that if she could sit there I could, and that I wasn't
going to let Jone or anybody else see that I was frightened by style
and fashion, though confronted by it so sudden and unexpected. So up
that ladder I went quick enough, having had practice in hay-mows, and
sat myself down between the young woman and the coachman, and when Jone
had tucked himself in behind me the horner blew his horn and away we
went.
[Illustration: "I looked at the ladder and at the top front seat"]
I tell you, madam, that box-seat was a queer box for me. I felt as
though I was sitting on the eaves of a roof with a herd of horses
cavoorting under my feet. I never had a bird's-eye view of horses
before. Looking down on their squirming bodies, with the coachman
almost standing on his tiptoes driving them, was so different from
Jone's buggy and our tall gray horse, which in general we look up to,
that for a good while I paid no attention to anything but the danger of
falling out on top of them. But having made sure that Jone was holding
on to my dress from behind, I began to take an interest in the things
around me.
Knowing as much as I thought I did about the bigness of London, I found
that morning that I never had any idea of what an everlasting town it
is. It is like a skein of tangled yarn - there doesn't seem to be any
end to it. Going in this way from Nelson's Monument out into the
country, it was amazing to see how long it took to get there. We would
go out of the busy streets into a quiet rural neighborhood, or what
looked like it, and the next thing we knew we'd be in another whirl of
omnibuses and cabs, with people and shops everywhere; and we'd go on
and through this and then come to another handsome village with country
houses, and the street would end in another busy town; and so on until
I began to think there was no real country, at least, in the direction
we was going.
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