If cattle have got their proper load, you never
can persuade a woman that they'll not bear something more. What is the
cause of this here?'

'Would these two travellers make much difference to the horses, if we
took them with us?' asked his mistress, offering no reply to the
philosophical inquiry, and pointing to Nell and the old man, who were
painfully preparing to resume their journey on foot.

'They'd make a difference in course,' said George doggedly.

'Would they make much difference?' repeated his mistress. 'They can't
be very heavy.'

'The weight o' the pair, mum,' said George, eyeing them with the look
of a man who was calculating within half an ounce or so, 'would be a
trifle under that of Oliver Cromwell.'

Nell was very much surprised that the man should be so accurately
acquainted with the weight of one whom she had read of in books as
having lived considerably before their time, but speedily forgot the
subject in the joy of hearing that they were to go forward in the
caravan, for which she thanked its lady with unaffected earnestness.
She helped with great readiness and alacrity to put away the tea-things
and other matters that were lying about, and, the horses being by that
time harnessed, mounted into the vehicle, followed by her delighted
grandfather. Their patroness then shut the door and sat herself down
by her drum at an open window; and, the steps being struck by George
and stowed under the carriage, away they went, with a great noise of
flapping and creaking and straining, and the bright brass knocker,
which nobody ever knocked at, knocking one perpetual double knock of
its own accord as they jolted heavily along.

CHAPTER 27

When they had travelled slowly forward for some short distance, Nell
ventured to steal a look round the caravan and observe it more closely.
One half of it--that moiety in which the comfortable proprietress was
then seated--was carpeted, and so partitioned off at the further end as
to accommodate a sleeping-place, constructed after the fashion of a
berth on board ship, which was shaded, like the little windows, with
fair white curtains, and looked comfortable enough, though by what kind
of gymnastic exercise the lady of the caravan ever contrived to get
into it, was an unfathomable mystery. The other half served for a
kitchen, and was fitted up with a stove whose small chimney passed
through the roof. It held also a closet or larder, several chests, a
gre