ool.

CHAPTER IV.

"Let the steam-pot hiss till it's hot,
Give me the speed of the Tantivy trot."
_Coaching Song by R. E. E. Warburton, Esq._

"NOW, sir, time to get up, if you please. Tally-ho coach for Leicester
'll be round in half-an-hour, and don't wait for nobody." So spake the
Boots of the Peacock Inn, Islington, at half-past two o'clock on the
morning of a day in the early part of November, 183-, giving Tom at the
same time a shake by the shoulder, and then putting down a candle and
carrying off his shoes to clean.

Tom and his father had 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--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.

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

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 cozily 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 fraternised with the boots
and ostler, 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.

Then b