“Quite the traveller, you see!” she cried gaily to Taffy.

Then the woman who had lent the breakfast-ware came running to say that Joby was getting impatient.  Humility handed the door-key to her, and so the little procession passed out and down across Mount Folly.

Joby had drawn his van up close to the granite steps.  They were the only passengers, it seemed.  The invalid was hoisted in and laid with her couch across the seats, so that her shoulders rested against one side of the van and her feet against the other.  Humility climbed in after her; but Taffy, to his joy, was given a seat outside the box.

“C’k!”—­they were off.

As they crawled up the street a few townspeople paused on the pavement and waved farewells.  At the top of the town they overtook three sailor-boys, with bundles, who climbed up and perched themselves a-top of the van, on the luggage.

On they went again.  There were two horses—­a roan and a grey.  Taffy had never before looked down on the back of a horse, and Joby’s horses astonished him; they were so broad behind, and so narrow at the shoulders.  He wanted to ask if the shape were at all common, but felt shy.  He stole a glance at the silver ring in Joby’s left ear, and blushed when Joby turned and caught him.

“Here, catch hold!” said Joby handing him the whip.  “Only you mustn’t use it too fierce.”

“Thank you.”

“I suppose you’ll be a scholar, like your father?  Can ee spell?”

“Yes.”

“Cipher?”

“Yes.”

“That’s more than I can.  I counts upon my fingers.  When they be used up, I begins upon my buttons.  I ha’n’t got no buttons—­visible that is—­’pon my week-a-day clothes; so I keeps the long sums for Sundays, and adds ’em up and down my weskit during sermon.  Don’t tell any person.”

“I won’t.”

“That’s right.  I don’t want it known.  Ever see a gipsy?”

“Oh, yes—­often.”

“Next time you see one you’ll know why he wears so many buttons.  You’ve a lot to learn.”

The van zigzagged down one hill and up another, and halted at a turnpike.  An old woman in a pink sun-bonnet bustled out and handed Joby a pink ticket.  A little way beyond they passed the angle of a mining district, with four or five engine-houses high up like castles on the hillside, and rows of stamps clattering and working up and down like ogres’ teeth.  Next they came to a church town, with a green and a heap of linen spread to dry (for it was Tuesday), and a flock of geese that ran and hissed after the van, until Joby took the whip and, leaning out, looped the gander by the neck and pulled him along in the dust.  The sailor-boys shouted with laughter and struck up a song about a fox and a goose, which lasted all the way up a long hill and brought them to a second turnpike, on the edge of the moors.  Here lived an old woman in a blue sun-bonnet; and she handed Joby a yellow-ticket.