Women are naturally communicative: after a little while the female in the dicky brought up, as a military man would say, her reserve, and entered into recitative with the guard during the pauses of the key-bugle. She informed him in the course of conversation, or rather dicky gossip, that she was an invaluable servant, and, as such, had been bequeathed by a deceased master to the care of one of his relatives at Putney, to exert her vigilance as a housekeeper, and to overlook everything for fifty pounds a year. “Such places,” she remarked, “is not to be found every day in the year.”
“If it’s Putney,” said the guard, “it’s the very place we’re going through. Hold hard, Tom, the young woman wants to get down.” Tom immediately pulled up; the young woman did get down, and her two trunks, three bandboxes, her bundle, and her hand-basket, were ranged round her. “I’ve had a very pleasant ride,” she said, giving the fare with a smirk and a courtesy to the coachman, “and am very much obliged,”--dropping a second courtesy to the guard,--“for other civilities. The boxes and things is quite correct, and won’t give further trouble, Mr. Guard, except to be as good as pint out the house I’m going to.” The guard thus appealed to, for a moment stood all aghast; but at last his wits came to his aid, and he gave the following lesson in geography.
“You’re all right--ourn a’n’t a short stage, and can’t go round setting people down at their own doors; but you’re safe enough at Putney--don’t be alarmed, my dear--you can’t go out of it. It’s all Putney, from the bridge we’ve just come over, to that windmill you almost can’t see t’other side of the common.”
“But, Mr. Guard, I’ve never been in Putney before, and it seems a scrambling sort of a place. If the coach can’t go round with me to the house, can’t you stretch a pint and set me down in sight of it?”
“It’s impossible--that’s the sum total; this coach is timed to a minute, and can’t do more for outsides if they was all kings of England.”
“I see how it is,” said the female, bridling up, while the coachman, out of patience, prepared to do quite the reverse; “some people are very civil, while some people are setting beside ’em in dickies; but give me the paper again, and I’ll find my own ways.”