“Time flies fast, and especially time devoted to pleasure, and none of the party are aware how fast the glass has run, until the entrance of the coachman, informing all concerned that the coach is ready.
“Up starts the stout gentleman. ‘Coachman, the time can’t be up; I’ve not eaten a morsel.’
“‘Full twenty minutes, sir,’ replies that Jehu.
“‘Abominable,’ continues the first speaker.
“‘Who riseth from a feast with that keen appetite that he sits down?’ quotes a stage-struck attorney’s clerk.
“‘I have,’ mutters the Daniel Lambert of the party; ‘and if Shakespeare wrote that--well, coach-dinners were not known in his time.’
“Now we do as we saw the ‘Independents’ do before us, and fee the coachman, scramble for greatcoats, cloaks, shawls and umbrellas, in addition to ringing for the waiters to bring that brandy-and-water ordered ten minutes before, but not yet forthcoming.
“Half-crowns and shillings are tendered in payment to the waiter, who of course has no change: what waiter ever had, when you were in a hurry? It is a mere additional annoyance that the stage-struck youth finds this an opportunity of quoting from _Pizarro_, ‘We want no change, and, least of all, such change as you would give us,’ concluding with the lines of one of Haynes Bayley’s popular ballads:--
And were I in a foreign land, You’d find no change in me.
“Now, at the ultimate moment, the waiter appears with a tray containing ‘one cold, without,’ ‘four hots, with,’ ‘two hots, sugar and no fruit,’ and ‘three with the chill off’--the ‘with’ and ‘without’ referring to sugar, the ‘no fruit’ applying to lemon. Fortunate now are the owners of cold beverages, for none but a fire-eater could swallow the scalding potations that are now left as perquisites to the waiter. Amid the babel of departure may be distinguished, ‘Please remember the waiter, sir!’ ‘Didn’t take for your dinner, sir.’ ‘Glass of brandy, ma’am.’ ‘A basin of soup and a pint of ale gone away without paying!’ ‘Chambermaid, ma’am.’ ‘Ostler, sir! I got you some nice dry straw.’
“Away, away. ‘Now, gentlemen, sit fast. Let ’em go, Jem--I’ve got ’em!’ and off goes the ‘Highflyer.’”
Here is another such scene, observed with another pair of eyes, or imagined by another brain:--