ast two o'clock
on the morning of a day in the early part of November 183-, giving
Tom at the same time a shake by the shoulder, and then putting down a
candle; and carrying off his shoes to clean.

Tom and his father arrived in town from Berkshire the day before, and
finding, on inquiry, that the Birmingham coaches which ran from the city
did not pass through Rugby, but deposited their passengers at Dunchurch,
a village three miles distant on the main road, where said passengers
had to wait for the Oxford and Leicester coach in the evening, or to
take a post-chaise, had resolved that Tom should travel down by the
Tally-ho, which diverged from the main road and passed through Rugby
itself. And as the Tally-ho was an early coach, they had driven out to
the Peacock to be on the road.

Tom had never been in London, and would have liked to have stopped at
the Belle Savage, where they had been put down by the Star, just at
dusk, that he might have gone roving about those endless, mysterious,
gas-lit streets, which, with their glare and hum and moving crowds,
excited him so that he couldn't talk even. But as soon as he found that
the Peacock arrangement would get him to Rugby by twelve o'clock in the
day, whereas otherwise he wouldn't be there till the evening, all
other plans melted away, his one absorbing aim being to become a public
school-boy as fast as possible, and six hours sooner or later seeming to
him of the most alarming importance.

Tom and his father had alighted at the Peacock at about seven in the
evening; and having heard with unfeigned joy the paternal order, at the
bar, of steaks and oyster-sauce for supper in half an hour, and seen
his father seated cozily by the bright fire in the coffee-room with the
paper in his hand, Tom had run out to see about him, had wondered at all
the vehicles passing and repassing, and had fraternized with the boots
and hostler, from whom he ascertained that the Tally-ho was a tip-top
goer--ten miles an hour including stoppages--and so punctual that all
the road set their clocks by her.

Then being summoned to supper, he had regaled himself in one of the
bright little boxes of the Peacock coffee-room, on the beef-steak
and unlimited oyster-sauce and brown stout (tasted then for the first
time--a day to be marked for ever by Tom with a white stone); had at
first attended to the excellent advice which his father was bestowing
on him from over his glass of steaming brandy-and-wa