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26

GOUT AND OPTHALMIA.

coach-door was again opened to the approach,

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with lingering steps and slow," of a tall female, labouring under a sharp attack of inflamed eyes, and conducted by a footboy, who was beguiling his tortoise pace by licking what still adhered to the paper wrapper of some baked treacle.

The ceremony of conveying this sufferer to the interior of the coach was nearly as tedious, but a far more grateful task, than the former; and though our young runaway had still less and less reason to congratulate himself on his fortune of the morning, he could not help feeling some sympathy with the unsightly lady, as she timidly took her place to the serenade of the only language the rabid gentleman seemed to have retained the slightest recollection of.

Fixed on the pavement to the very last, though he had heard twenty times the coach was then starting, Elliston, the third patient, entered the narrow ward of this migrating hospital. Placing himself next to the swaddled feet of the raving martyr, and opposite to two faces, one the largest he had ever gazed on out of a masquerade shop, and the other the longest he had ever seen from the convex of a silver spoon, he was conveyed by degrees from the rugged pavement of Piccadilly to travel one hundred and ten miles at the same rate of enjoyment.

CHAPTER II.

A journey, "strange bedfellows"-Ugly knocks-A frozen footboy-Comfortable quarters-A family group-A lovely girl -A Scotch ballad-" Speechifying"-A sleepless nightA parting-Elliston arrives at Bath-" His first appearance upon any stage"-Dimond-Tate Wilkinson, anecdote of, and characteristic letter-Wrench-Elliston's remorseLetter to his uncle-Acts at Leeds-Increasing despondency-Second letter to Dr. Elliston-A joyful surpriseYoung Elliston returns to London-Visits Cambridge-His reception by the Master of Sidney.

THE gouty passenger, as we shall be better informed hereafter, was a certain contractor, who, not very long before, had been indicted for fraud, and sentenced in severe penalties. Having secured, as already mentioned, a double place for his single convenience, he seemed to question the right of any other person to interfere with what remained. As to the "dark" lady on his own side, he took no more notice of her than though she had never been in existence; nor is it surprising, for she was, in fact, by this time, pretty nearly out of it-the contractor's body occupying two-thirds of the seat,

28

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS."

while the redundant folds of his Bath wrapper totally obscured what might still have remained discoverable of his thin neighbour. His look of defiance, therefore, was wholly fixed on the youth in the diagonal direction, whose hale and good-natured countenance certainly refuted any pretensions to a place in the" Invalid," being in a state somewhat similar to the poor, honest, houseless girl, who, on applying for shelter at the "Refuge" for unhappy females, was told she must first go and qualify.

After some miles, the rain began to fall violently. Under a closed window the factor was safely nestled ; but the aperture on the other side admitting the weather directly on the tender optic membrane of his despised companion, she ventured to raise the glass a few inches before her face, on which the man of fraud, abruptly extending his arm, thrust it again into its first position. Elliston, who really, on his own account, would have desired as much air as possible, felt so thoroughly indignant at this piece of brutality, that, seizing the tassel, and at the same time pulling up the frame, he observed

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Pray, madam, consult your own convenience, and suffer me, for the rest of the journey, to undertake that it be respected;" on which the contractor spirted some half-articulate language of abuse, which the other had too much discretion to regard.

It was towards the evening when the company had resumed their seats in the coach, after a dinner at

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the usual house for stopping, where the false factor had secured to himself nearly the whole of the fire, and demolished quite the whole of a bottle of Madeira, that, to the notes of ventricle growling, which, with him, were both matins and vespers, he fell into a roaring sleep. The cartilaginous bassoon which nature had fixed in the centre of his face seemed to emit indications of rest, while accompanying groans gave equal evidence of endurance. The one-third of the seat which he had at first conceded to the "dark" female was now taxed down to the poor modicum of a fifth. Too nearly suffocated to utter complaint, she might, in fact, have been altogether annihilated, but that her extreme thinness yet preserved vitality in the cleft it occupied.

The trick of nodding appeared (like everything else upon the road) to be overtaking the whole coach, and our young traveller began presently to doze, like a judge upon his seat. How long he slept he could as little ascertain as Gulliver himself when he took his first nap, on being thrown on the shores of Lilliput; but his recall to reason was one of the most unequivocal facts, perhaps, ever recorded.

A jolt of the vehicle, in passing over the rotten highway of a certain borough, threw him, bodily, with so much force athwart the horizontal limbs of the snoring factor, that, "ululante dolore," snatching his short crutch at his side, the man of fraud let fall so absolute a crack on the sconce of his un

30

A FROZEN FOOTBOY.

conscious offender, that in reverberate accents, shrill as the seabird, and with talons almost as fatal, Elliston seized his assailant by the folds of his fleecy "comforter," and would certainly have strangled him outright, had he not been awakened to fresh terrors by the shriek of the poor obumbrated lady, who, by this time, having been entirely forgotten, appeared to exclaim from the very tomb itself.

This triple indication of distress brought the horses abruptly to a stand, and the coachman alighting to learn the nature of the mélée, both combatants united in abusing him for his interference, on which he deliberately resumed his reins, leaving the two gentlemen, as he expressed it, "to fight it out for the young 'oman as they pleased."

In due time they arrived at Newbury, their resting place for the night. Elliston would now willingly have offered his assistance to his fellow sufferer, the lady, but to his relief, he heard that "Henriquez” was in attendance. Hereupon, the identical footboy whom we first noticed on the flags of Piccadilly, descended, or, rather, was handed down from the vehicle-for, in point of fact, he was so nearly frozen as to resemble a stuffed figure over the shopwindow of a juvenile outfitter. During the last ten miles, the coachman had suffered him to creep into the boot for the little warmth it might afford, and he was now lifted out quite as hardened, and nearly

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