My box was at my old lodging, over the water, and I had written a direction for it on the back of one of our address cards that we nailed on the casks: “Master David, to be left till called for, at the Coach Office, Dover.” This I had in my pocket ready to put on the box, after I should have got it out of the house; and as I went towards my lodging, I looked about me for someone who would help me to carry it to the booking-office.

There was a long-legged young man with a very little empty donkey-cart, standing near the Obelisk, in the Blackfriars Road, whose eye I caught as I was going by, and who, addressing me as “Sixpenn’orth of bad ha’pence,” hoped “I should know him agin to swear to”⁠—in allusion, I have no doubt, to my staring at him. I stopped to assure him that I had not done so in bad manners, but uncertain whether he might or might not like a job.

“Wot job?” said the long-legged young man.

“To move a box,” I answered.

“Wot box?” said the long-legged young man.