While the foregoing scene was enacting outside, our travellers had been driven through the passage into a little, dark, dingy room at the back of the house, with a dirty, rain-bespattered window, looking against a whitewashed blank wall.  The table, which was covered with a thrice-used cloth, was set out with lumps of bread, knives, and two and three pronged forks laid alternately.  Altogether it was anything but inviting, but coach passengers are very complacent; and on the Dover road it matters little if they are not.  The bustle of preparation was soon over.  Coats No. 1, No. 2, and No. 3, are taken off in succession, for some people wear top-coats to keep out the “heat”; chins are released from their silken jeopardy, hats are hid in corners, and fur caps thrust into pockets of the owners.  Inside passengers eye outside ones with suspicion, while a deaf gentleman, who has left his trumpet in the coach, meets an acquaintance whom he has not seen for seven years, and can only shake hands and grin to the movements of the lips of the speaker.  “You find it very warm inside, I should think, sir?” “Thank ye, thank ye, my good friend; I’m rayther deaf, but I presume you’re inquiring after my wife and daughters—­they are very well, I thank ye.”  “Where will you sit at dinner?” rejoins the first speaker, in hopes of a more successful hit.  “It is two years since I saw him.”  “No; where will you sit, sir?  I said.”  “Oh, John?  I beg your pardon—­I’m rayther deaf—­he’s in Jamaica with his regiment.”  “Come, waiter, BRING DINNER!” roared Mr. Jorrocks, at the top of his voice, being the identical shout that was heard outside, and presently the two dishes of pork, a couple of ducks, and a lump of half-raw, sadly mangled, cold roast beef, with waxy potatoes and overgrown cabbages, were scattered along the table.  “What a beastly dinner!” exclaims an inside dandy, in a sable-collared frock-coat—­“the whole place reeks with onions and vulgarity.  Waiter, bring me a silver fork!” “Allow me to duck you, ma’am?” inquires an outside passenger, in a facetious tone, of a female in a green silk cloak, as he turns the duck over in the dish.  “Thank you, sir, but I’ve some pork coming.”  “Will you take some of this thingumbob?” turning a questionable-looking pig’s countenance over in its pewter bed.  “You are in considerable danger, my friend—­you are in considerable danger,” drawls forth the superfine insider to an outsider opposite.  “How’s that?” inquires the former in alarm.  “Why, you are eating with your knife, and you are in considerable danger of cutting your mouth".—­What is the matter at the far end of the table?—­a lady in russet brown, with a black velvet bonnet and a feather, in convulsions.  “She’s choking by Jove! hit her on the back—­gently, gently—­she’s swallowed a fish-bone.”  “I’ll lay five to two she dies,” cries Mr. Bolus, the sporting doctor of Sittingbourne.  She coughs—­up comes a couple of tooth-picks, she having drunk off a green glass of them in mistake.