d.
Being much flushed and excited, I tumbled my half-guinea out of my
pocket in pulling the card out. I put it in my mouth for safety, and
though my hands trembled a good deal, had just tied the card on very
much to my satisfaction, when I felt myself violently chucked under the
chin by the long-legged young man, and saw my half-guinea fly out of my
mouth into his hand.
'Wot!' said the young man, seizing me by my jacket collar, with a
frightful grin. 'This is a pollis case, is it? You're a-going to bolt,
are you? Come to the pollis, you young warmin, come to the pollis!'
'You give me my money back, if you please,' said I, very much
frightened; 'and leave me alone.'
'Come to the pollis!' said the young man. 'You shall prove it yourn to
the pollis.'
'Give me my box and money, will you,' I cried, bursting into tears.
The young man still replied: 'Come to the pollis!' and was dragging me
against the donkey in a violent manner, as if there were any affinity
between that animal and a magistrate, when he changed his mind, jumped
into the cart, sat upon my box, and, exclaiming that he would drive to
the pollis straight, rattled away harder than ever.
I ran after him as fast as I could, but I had no breath to call out
with, and should not have dared to call out, now, if I had. I narrowly
escaped being run over, twenty times at least, in half a mile. Now I
lost him, now I saw him, now I lost him, now I was cut at with a whip,
now shouted at, now down in the mud, now up again, now running into
somebody's arms, now running headlong at a post. At length, confused by
fright and heat, and doubting whether half London might not by this time
be turning out for my apprehension, I left the young man to go where
he would with my box and money; and, panting and crying, but never
stopping, faced about for Greenwich, which I had understood was on
the Dover Road: taking very little more out of the world, towards the
retreat of my aunt, Miss Betsey, than I had brought into it, on the
night when my arrival gave her so much umbrage.
CHAPTER 13. THE SEQUEL OF MY RESOLUTION
For anything I know, I may have had some wild idea of running all the
way to Dover, when I gave up the pursuit of the young man with the
donkey-cart, and started for Greenwich. My scattered senses were soon
collected as to that point, if I had; for I came to a stop in the Kent
Road, at a terrace with a piece of water before it, and a great foolish
image
|