He did things with his hat, which nothing but an
unlimited knowledge of horses and the wildest freedom of the road, could
ever have made him perfect in. Valuable little parcels were brought to
him with particular instructions, and he pitched them into this hat, and
stuck it on again; as if the laws of gravity did not admit of such
an event as its being knocked off or blown off, and nothing like an
accident could befall it. The guard, too! Seventy breezy miles a day
were written in his very whiskers. His manners were a canter; his
conversation a round trot. He was a fast coach upon a down-hill turnpike
road; he was all pace. A waggon couldn't have moved slowly, with that
guard and his key-bugle on the top of it.
These were all foreshadowings of London, Tom thought, as he sat upon
the box, and looked about him. Such a coachman, and such a guard, never
could have existed between Salisbury and any other place. The coach
was none of your steady-going, yokel coaches, but a swaggering, rakish,
dissipated London coach; up all night, and lying by all day, and leading
a devil of a life.
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