Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/195

 182 “Let me see,” tried his waistcoat. Not too impetuously; for he was careful of betraying the horrid emptiness till he was certain that the Powers who wait on gentlemen had utterly forsaken him. They had not. He discovered a small coin, under ordinary circumstances not contemptible; but he did not stay to reflect, and was guilty of the error of offering it to the postillion.

The latter peered at it in the centre of his palm; gazed queerly in the gentleman’s face, and then lifting the spit of silver for the disdain of his mistress, the moon, he drew a long breath of regret at the original mistake he had committed, and said:

“That’s what you’re goin’ to give me for my night’s work?”

The Powers who wait on gentlemen had only helped the pretending youth to try him. A rejection of the demand would have been infinitely wiser and better than this paltry compromise. The postillion would have fought it: he would not have despised his fare.

How much it cost the poor pretender to reply, “It’s the last farthing I have, my man,” the postillion could not know.

“A scabby sixpence?” The postillion continued his question.

“You heard what I said,” Evan remarked.

The postillion drew another deep breath, and holding out the coin at arm’s length: “Well, sir!” he observed, as one whom mental conflict had brought to the philosophy of the case, “now was we to change places, I couldn’t ’a done it! I couldn’t ’a done it!” he reiterated, pausing emphatically.

“Take it, sir!” he magnanimously resumed; “take it! You rides when you can, and you walks when you must. Lord forbid I should rob such a gentleman as you!”

One who feels a death, is for the hour lifted above the satire of postillions. A good genius prompted Evan to avoid the silly squabble that might have ensued and made him ridiculous. He took the money, quietly saying, “Thank you.”

Not to lose his vantage, the postillion, though a little staggered by the move, rejoined: “Don’t mention it.”

Evan then said: “Good night, my man. I won’t wish, for your sake, that we changed places. You would have to walk fifty miles to be in time for your father’s funeral. Good night.”

“You are it—to look at!” was the postillion’s comment, seeing my gentleman depart with great strides. He did not speak offensively; rather, it seemed, to appease his conscience for the original mistake he had committed, for subsequently came, “My oath on it, I don’t get took in again by a squash hat in a hurry!”

Unaware of the ban he had, by a sixpenny stamp, put upon an unoffending class, Evan went a-head, hearing the wheels of the chariot still dragging the road in his rear. The postillion was in a dissatisfied state of mind. He had asked and received more than his due. But in the matter of his sweet self, he had been choused, as he termed it. And my gentleman had baffled him, he could not quite tell how; but he had been got the better of; his sarcasms had not stuck, and returned to rankle in the bosom of their author. As a Jew, therefore, may eye an erewhile bondsman who has paid the bill, but stands out against excess of interest on legal grounds, the postillion