a shake by the shoulder, and then putting
down a candle and carrying off his shoes to clean.

[1] #Tally-ho#: the cry with which huntsmen urge on their
hounds; here, a name given to a fast coach.

[2] #Boots#: a servant in an inn who blacks boots, etc.

[3] #Islington#: a northern suburb of London.

TOM ARRIVES IN TOWN.

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,[4] 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.

[4] #Post-chaise#: a hired carriage.

Tom had never been in London, and would have liked to have stopped at
the Belle Sauvage,[5] where they had been put down by the Star,[6]
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.

[5] #Belle Sauvage#: a famous old inn, formerly in the centre
of London.

[6] #Star#: the name of the coach which brought the Squire and
Tom to London.

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 cosily 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.

SQUIRE BROWN'S PARTIN