Vulcan who drove us down to Moreton;” and then he whispered something that made the lady smile, and a bright colour come all over her handsome face. “Do you drive the mail now?” he says, turning to me.

“Never touched a handle since, sir,” I says. “They had me afore the board two mornings after, and discharged me.” And then the thoughts of it all seemed too much for me, and I turned husky and choky, and couldn’t speak for a minute, when I says, with a sort of gulp:—

“Can’t help it, sir; I’ve been werry hard drove since—wife—children—” and then I choked again as I shunted off what I was saying.

“Stand back a bit,” says the gentleman to his servant, and then, in so kind and gentle a way, he says to me—“Why, my poor fellow, I wouldn’t have had this happen on any account;” and then I saw a tear or two in his lady’s beautiful eyes, and they both stopped talking to me a good quarter of an hour, free as could be, telling me that they had me to thank for much happiness, as theirs was a runaway match. And at last, when they drove off, nodding and smiling at me, I had the gentleman’s card, so as to call on him next morning, when he said his father, being a railway director, I should be took on the line at once; and, what was more to the purpose then, there were five sovereigns in my hand.

I didn’t know what to do, whether to laugh or cry; and I’m sure I must have looked like a madman as I tore through the streets, and rushed upstairs into our room, when the first thing I did was to scrape up every bit of coal at the bottom of the cupboard and put it a-top of the fire.

“Lay the cloth, my lass,” I says, seizing a dish; “and, Lord bless you, look alive!” The children stared, and then laughed and clapped their hands, while I rushed out to the cook’s shop in the lane, looking like a wolf.

There was a roast goose just up, and cissing away in the big pewter dish all amongst the gravy, with the stuffing a smelling that rich, it was enough to drive you mad.

Just as I slipped into the door, the waiter—red-nosed chap—with a dirty white wisp of a handkercher round his neck, looking like a seedy undertaker—the waiter says: “Two goose—apple sauce—and taters;” and the master sticks his fork into the buzzum, and makes a cut as sent the stuffing all out of a gush.

“Hold hard,” I says, “that’s mine;” and ketching hold of one leg, before he knew what I was up to, it was on my dish. “Now then, ladle on that gravy,” I says, “and let’s have the setrers;” and saying that, I dabs a sovrin down 

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