e
to be paid, and Tipp the carman, who always took precedence, went in
first to draw his money, I shook Mick Walker by the hand; asked him,
when it came to his turn to be paid, to say to Mr. Quinion that I had
gone to move my box to Tipp's; and, bidding a last good night to Mealy
Potatoes, ran away.

My box was at my old lodging, over the water, and I had written a
direction for it on the back of one of our address cards that we nailed
on the casks: 'Master David, to be left till called for, at the Coach
Office, Dover.' This I had in my pocket ready to put on the box, after I
should have got it out of the house; and as I went towards my lodging,
I looked about me for someone who would help me to carry it to the
booking-office.

There was a long-legged young man with a very little empty donkey-cart,
standing near the Obelisk, in the Blackfriars Road, whose eye I caught
as I was going by, and who, addressing me as 'Sixpenn'orth of bad
ha'pence,' hoped 'I should know him agin to swear to'--in allusion, I
have no doubt, to my staring at him. I stopped to assure him that I had
not done so in bad manners, but uncertain whether he might or might not
like a job.

'Wot job?' said the long-legged young man.

'To move a box,' I answered.

'Wot box?' said the long-legged young man.

I told him mine, which was down that street there, and which I wanted
him to take to the Dover coach office for sixpence.

'Done with you for a tanner!' said the long-legged young man, and
directly got upon his cart, which was nothing but a large wooden tray on
wheels, and rattled away at such a rate, that it was as much as I could
do to keep pace with the donkey.

There was a defiant manner about this young man, and particularly about
the way in which he chewed straw as he spoke to me, that I did not much
like; as the bargain was made, however, I took him upstairs to the room
I was leaving, and we brought the box down, and put it on his cart.
Now, I was unwilling to put the direction-card on there, lest any of my
landlord's family should fathom what I was doing, and detain me; so
I said to the young man that I would be glad if he would stop for a
minute, when he came to the dead-wall of the King's Bench prison. The
words were no sooner out of my mouth, than he rattled away as if he, my
box, the cart, and the donkey, were all equally mad; and I was quite out
of breath with running and calling after him, when I caught him at the
place appointe