'What an
unlikely time for you to be a-going this way with a bag!'
'I am going to Salisbury,' said Tom.
'Why, goodness, where's the gig, then?' cried the tollman's wife,
looking down the road, as if she thought Tom might have been upset
without observing it.
'I haven't got it,' said Tom. 'I--' he couldn't evade it; he felt she
would have him in the next question, if he got over this one. 'I have
left Mr Pecksniff.'
The tollman--a crusty customer, always smoking solitary pipes in a
Windsor chair, inside, set artfully between two little windows that
looked up and down the road, so that when he saw anything coming up he
might hug himself on having toll to take, and when he saw it going down,
might hug himself on having taken it--the tollman was out in an instant.
'Left Mr Pecksniff!' cried the tollman.
'Yes,' said Tom, 'left him.'
The tollman looked at his wife, uncertain whether to ask her if she had
anything to suggest, or to order her to mind the children. Astonishment
making him surly, he preferred the latter, and sent her into the
toll-house with a flea in her ear.
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