To this ignominious avenue of approach, Mr. Crisparkle repaired, awaiting the arrival of a short squat omnibus, with a disproportionate heap of luggage on the roof—like a little Elephant with infinitely too much Castle—which was then the daily service between Cloisterham and external mankind. As this vehicle lumbered up, Mr. Crisparkle could hardly see anything else of it for a large outside passenger seated on the box, with his elbows squared, and his hands on his knees, compressing the driver into a most uncomfortably small compass, and glowering about him with a strongly marked face.
“Is this Cloisterham?” demanded the passenger, in a tremendous voice.
“It is,” replied the driver, rubbing himself as if he ached, after throwing the reins to the ostler. “And I never was so glad to see it.”
“Tell your master to make his box seat wider, then,” returned the passenger. “Your master is morally bound—and ought to be legally, under ruinous penalties—to provide for the comfort of his fellow-man.”
The driver instituted, with the palms of his hands, a superficial perquisition into the state of his skeleton; which seemed to make him anxious.
“Have I sat upon you?” asked the passenger.
“You have,” said the driver, as if he didn’t like it at all.
“Take that card, my friend.”
“I think I won’t deprive you on it,” returned the driver, casting his eyes over it with no great favour, without taking it. “What’s the good of it to me?”