ese are
advantages indeed.'

'You may say that, sir,' rejoined Squeers, thrusting his hands into his
great-coat pockets. 'The most unexceptionable references are given
and required. I wouldn't take a reference with any boy, that wasn't
responsible for the payment of five pound five a quarter, no, not if you
went down on your knees, and asked me, with the tears running down your
face, to do it.'

'Highly considerate,' said the passenger.

'It's my great aim and end to be considerate, sir,' rejoined Squeers.
'Snawley, junior, if you don't leave off chattering your teeth, and
shaking with the cold, I'll warm you with a severe thrashing in about
half a minute's time.'

'Sit fast here, genelmen,' said the guard as he clambered up.

'All right behind there, Dick?' cried the coachman.

'All right,' was the reply. 'Off she goes!' And off she did go--if
coaches be feminine--amidst a loud flourish from the guard's horn,
and the calm approval of all the judges of coaches and coach-horses
congregated at the Peacock, but more especially of the helpers, who
stood, with the cloths over their arms, watching the coach till it
disappeared, and then lounged admiringly stablewards, bestowing various
gruff encomiums on the beauty of the turn-out.

When the guard (who was a stout old Yorkshireman) had blown himself
quite out of breath, he put the horn into a little tunnel of a basket
fastened to the coach-side for the purpose, and giving himself a
plentiful shower of blows on the chest and shoulders, observed it was
uncommon cold; after which, he demanded of every person separately
whether he was going right through, and if not, where he WAS going.
Satisfactory replies being made to these queries, he surmised that the
roads were pretty heavy arter that fall last night, and took the
liberty of asking whether any of them gentlemen carried a snuff-box. It
happening that nobody did, he remarked with a mysterious air that he had
heard a medical gentleman as went down to Grantham last week, say how
that snuff-taking was bad for the eyes; but for his part he had never
found it so, and what he said was, that everybody should speak as they
found. Nobody attempting to controvert this position, he took a small
brown-paper parcel out of his hat, and putting on a pair of horn
spectacles (the writing being crabbed) read the direction half-a-dozen
times over; having done which, he consigned the parcel to its old place,
put up his spectacles again,