Page:Works of Charles Dickens, ed. Lang - Volume 2.djvu/378

 were pouring in, every moment, there was no telling where they came from. They seemed to start up, in some strange manner, from the ground, or the air, and disappear in the same way. When a porter had put his luggage in the coach, and received his fare, he turned round and was gone; and before my uncle had well begun to wonder what had become of him, half-a-dozen fresh ones started up, and staggered along under the weight of parcels which seemed big enough to crush them. The passengers were all dressed so oddly too! Large, broad-skirted laced coats with great cuffs and no collars; and wigs, gentlemen,—great formal wigs with a tie behind. My uncle could make nothing of it.

Now, are you going to get in?' said the person who had addressed my uncle before. He was dressed as a mail guard, with a wig on his head and most enormous cuffs to his coat, and had a lantern in one hand, and a huge blunderbuss in the other, which he was going to stow away in his little arm-chest. ' Are you going to get in, Jack Martin?" said the guard, holding the lantern to my uncle's face.

Hallo!' said my uncle, falling back a step or two.'That's familiar!"

It's so on the way-bill,' replied the guard.d Isn't there a "Mister" before it?' said my uncle. For he felt, gentlemen, that for a guard he didn't know, to call him Jack Martin, was a liberty which the Post-office wouldn't have sanctioned if they had known it.

No, there is not,' rejoined the guard coolly.

Is the fare paid?' inquired my uncle.

Of course it is,' rejoined the guard.

It is, is it? said my uncle. Then here goes! Which coach?"

This,' said the guard, pointing to an old-fashioned Edinburgh and London Mail, which had the steps down, and the door open. 'Stop! Here are the other passengers. Let them get in first."

"As the guard spoke, there all at once appeared, right in