ithmetic--snuff,
tobacker, and sleep."

"That ain't a sort of man to see sitting behind a coach-box, is it,
though?" says William in David's ear. David construes this remark into
an indication of a wish that "the gentleman" should have his place, so
he blushingly offers to resign it.

"Well, if you don't mind," says William, "I think it would be more
correct."

Poor David, "so very young!" gives up his box-seat, and thus moralizes
on his action:--

"I have always considered this as the first fall I
had in life. When I booked my place at the
coach-office, I had had 'Box Seat' written against
the entry, and had given the book-keeper
half-a-crown. I was got up in a special great coat
and shawl, expressly to do honour to that
distinguished eminence; had glorified myself upon
it a good deal; and had felt that I was a credit
to the coach. And here, in the very first stage, I
was supplanted by a shabby man with a squint, who
had no other merit than smelling like a
livery-stables, and being able to walk across me,
more like a fly than a human being, while the
horses were at a canter."

Pip, in _Great Expectations_, also made very many journeys to and from
London, along the Dover road (the London road it is called in the
novel), but the two most notable were, firstly, the occasion of his
ride outside the coach with the two convicts as fellow-passengers on the
back-seat--"bringing with them that curious flavour of bread-poultice,
baize, rope-yarn, and hearth-stone, which attends the convict presence;"
and secondly, that in which he walked all the way to London, after the
sad interview at Miss Havisham's house, where he learns that Estella is
to become the wife of Bentley Drummle:--

"All done, all gone! So much was done and gone,
that when I went out at the gate the light of day
seemed of a darker colour than when I went in. For
awhile I hid myself among some lanes and bypaths,
and then started off to walk all the way to
London. . . . It was past midnight when I crossed
London Bridge."

One more reference is made to the Dover road in _Bleak House_, where
that most lovable of the many lovable characters in Dickens's novels,
Esther Summerson, makes her journey, with her faithful little maid
Charley, to Deal, in o