evidently polished up with whitening, for my greater delight. But its most precious contents were two half-crowns folded together in a bit of paper, on which was written, in my mother’s hand, “For Davy. With my love.” I was so overcome by this, that I asked the carrier to be so good as to reach me my pocket-handkerchief again; but he said he thought I had better do without it, and I thought I really had, so I wiped my eyes on my sleeve and stopped myself.
For good, too; though, in consequence of my previous emotions, I was still occasionally seized with a stormy sob. After we had jogged on for some little time, I asked the carrier if he was going all the way.
“All the way where?” inquired the carrier.
“There,” I said.
“Where’s there?” inquired the carrier.
“Near London,” I said.
“Why that horse,” said the carrier, jerking the rein to point him out, “would be deader than pork afore he got over half the ground.”
“Are you only going to Yarmouth then?” I asked.
“That’s about it,” said the carrier. “And there I shall take you to the stage-cutch, and the stage-cutch that’ll take you to—wherever it is.”
As this was a great deal for the carrier (whose name was Mr. Barkis) to say—he being, as I observed in a former chapter, of a phlegmatic temperament, and not at all conversational—I offered him a cake as a mark of attention, which he ate at one gulp, exactly like an elephant, and which made no more impression on his big face than it would have done on an elephant’s.