Off went the mail at
a canter down the dark road; the lamps gleaming brightly, and the horn
awakening all the echoes, far and wide.
'Go your ways,' said Pinch, apostrophizing the coach; 'I can hardly
persuade myself but you're alive, and are some great monster who visits
this place at certain intervals, to bear my friends away into the world.
You're more exulting and rampant than usual tonight, I think; and you
may well crow over your prize; for he is a fine lad, an ingenuous lad,
and has but one fault that I know of; he don't mean it, but he is most
cruelly unjust to Pecksniff!'
CHAPTER THREE
IN WHICH CERTAIN OTHER PERSONS ARE INTRODUCED; ON THE SAME TERMS AS IN
THE LAST CHAPTER
Mention has been already made more than once, of a certain Dragon who
swung and creaked complainingly before the village alehouse door. A
faded, and an ancient dragon he was; and many a wintry storm of rain,
snow, sleet, and hail, had changed his colour from a gaudy blue to a
faint lack-lustre shade of grey. But there he hung; rearing, in a state
of monstrous imbecility, on his hind legs; waxing, with every month that
passed, so much more dim and shapeless, that as you gazed at him on
one side of the sign-board it seemed as if he must be gradually melting
through it, and coming out upon the other.
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