ed that their heads
were together in close conversation, in which the coachman himself
from time to time took a share, slewing round to listen or interject
a word and anon breaking off to direct the stowage of a parcel or
call an order to the stable-boys. Mrs. Stimcoe had stepped into the
office to book my place, and while I waited for her, watching the
preparations for departure, my curiosity led me forward to take a
look at the horses. There, under the lamp, the coachman caught sight
of me.
"Whe-ew!" I heard him whistle. "Here's the boy himself! Going along
wi' us, sonny?" he asked, looking down on me and speaking down in a
voice which seemed to me unnaturally gentle--for I remembered him as
a gruff fellow and irascible. The outside passengers at once broke
off their talk to lean over and take stock of me; and this again
struck me as queer.
"Jim!" called the coachman (Jim was the guard). "Jim!"
"Ay, ay!" answered Jim, from the back of the roof, where he was
arranging the mail-bags.
"Here's an outside extry." He lowered his voice, so that I caught
only these words: "The youngster . . . Minden Cottage . . .
I reckoned they'd be sending--"
"Hey?"
Jim the guard bent over for a look at me, and scrambled down by the
steps of his dickey, just as Mrs. Stimcoe emerged from the office.
She was pale and agitated, and stood for a moment gazing about her
distractedly, when Jim blundered against her, whereat she put out a
hand and spoke to him. I saw Jim fall back a step and touch his hat.
He was listening, with a very serious face. I could not hear what
she said.
"Cert'nly, ma'm'," he answered. "Cert'nly, under the circumstances,
you may depend on me."
He mounted the coach again, and, climbing forward whispered in the
back of the coachman's ear. The passengers bent their heads to
listen. They nodded; the coachman nodded too, and stretched down a
hand.
"Can you climb, sonny, or shall we fetch the steps for you?
There, I reckoned you was more of a man than to need 'em!"
Mrs. Stimcoe detained me for a moment to fold me in a masculine hug.
But her bosom might have been encased in an iron corselet for all the
tenderness it conveyed. "God bless you, Harry Brooks, and try to be
a man!" Her embrace relaxed, and with a dry-sounding sob she let me
go as I caught the coachman's hand and was swung up to my seat; and
with that we were off and up the cobble-paved street at a rattle.
I do not know the na
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