“Well, we must live and let live!” the woman said philosophically.  “You may thank your stars nature hasn’t made you as big as I am.  Little people have their advantages.  But we can’t have everything our own way.  That’s what I tells my Jim; he is always a-wanting to have his own way.  That comes from being a captain; but, as I tells him, it’s only reasonable as he is captain on board his ship I should be captain in my house.  I suppose you are going to school?”

“No, I am not.  My school is just over.”

“Going all the way up to London?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a mercy,” the woman said.  “I was afraid you might be only going as far as Canterbury, and then I might have got some big chap up here who would squeeze me as flat as a pancake.  Men is so unthoughtful, and seems to think as women can stow themselves away anywheres.  I wish you would feel and get your hand in my pocket, young man.  I can’t do it nohow, and I ain’t sure that I have got my keys with me; and that girl Eliza will be getting at the bottles and a-having men in, and then there will be a nice to-do with the lodgers.  Can’t you find it?  It is in the folds somewhere.”

“With much difficulty Ralph found the pocket-hole, and thrusting his hand in was able to reassure his neighbor by feeling among a mass of odds and ends a bunch of keys.

“That’s a comfort,” the woman said.  “If one’s mind isn’t at ease one can’t enjoy traveling.”

“I wish my body was at ease,” Ralph said.  “Don’t you think you could squeeze them a little on the other side and give me an inch or two more room?”

“I will try,” the woman said; “as you seem a civil sort of boy.”

Whereupon she gave two or three heaves, which relieved Ralph greatly, but involved her in an altercation with her neighbor on the other side, which lasted till the towers of Canterbury came in sight.  Here they changed horses at the Fountain Inn.

“Look here, my boy,” the woman said to Ralph.  “If you feel underneath my feet you will find a basket, and at the top there is an empty bottle.  There will be just time for you to jump down and get it filled for me.  A shilling’s worth of brandy, and filled up with water.  That girl Eliza flustered me so much with her worritting and questions before I started that I had not time to fill it.”

Ralph jumped down and procured the desired refreshment, and was just in time to clamber up to his seat again when the coach started.  He enjoyed the rapid motion and changing scene much, but he was not sorry when—­as evening was coming on—­he saw ahead of him a dull mist, which his fellow-passenger told him was the smoke of London.

It was nine in the evening when the coach drove into the courtyard of the Bull Inn.  The guard, who had received instructions from Mrs. Conway, at once gave Ralph and his box into the charge of one of the porters awaiting the arrival of the coach, and told him to take the box to the inn from which the coach for Weymouth started in the morning.  Cramped by his fourteen hours’ journey Ralph had at first some difficulty in following his conductor through the crowded street, but the stiffness soon wore off, and after ten minutes walking he arrived at the inn.