rattle past, as if we were a part of their legitimate
morning's amusement. We clear the town, and are well out between the
hedgerows again as the town clock strikes eight.

The sun shines almost warmly, and breakfast has oiled all springs and
loosened all tongues. Tom is encouraged by a remark or two of the
guard's between the puffs of his oily cheroot, and besides is getting
tired of not talking; he is too full of his destination to talk about
anything else; and so asks the guard if he knows Rugby.

"Goes through it every day of my life. Twenty minutes afore twelve
down--ten o'clock up."

"What sort of a place is it, please?" says Tom.

Guard looks at him with a comical expression. "Werry out-o'-the-way
place, sir; no paving to the streets nor no lighting. 'Mazin' big horse
and cattle fair in autumn--lasts a week--just over now. Takes town a
week to get clean after it. Fairish hunting country. But slow place,
sir, slow place: off the main road, you see--only three coaches a day, and
one on 'em a two-oss wan, more like a hearse nor a coach--Regulator--comes
from Oxford. Young genl'm'n at school calls her Pig and Whistle, and
goes up to college by her (six miles an hour) when they goes to enter.
Belong to school, sir?"

"Yes," says Tom, not unwilling for a moment that the guard should think
him an old boy. But then having some qualms as to the truth of the
assertion, and seeing that if he were to assume the character of an old
boy he couldn't go on asking the questions he wanted, added--"that is to
say, I'm on my way there. I'm a new boy."

The guard looked as if he knew this quite as well as Tom.

"You're werry late, sir," says the guard; "only six weeks to-day to the
end of the half." Tom assented. "We takes up fine loads this day six
weeks, and Monday and Tuesday arter. Hopes we shall have the pleasure of
carrying you back."

Tom said he hoped they would; but he thought within himself that his
fate would probably be the Pig and Whistle.

"It pays uncommon, cert'nly," continues the guard. "Werry free with
their cash is the young genl'm'n. But, Lor' bless you, we gets into such
rows all 'long the road, what wi' their pea-shooters, and long whips,
and hollering, and upsetting every one as comes by; I'd a sight sooner
carry one or two on 'em, sir, as I may be a carryin' of you now, than a
coach-load."

"What do they do with the pea-shooters?" inquires Tom.

"Do wi' 'em! why, peppers every one's faces as we c