Not to lose his vantage, the postillion, though a little staggered by the move, rejoined:  ‘Don’t mention it.’

Evan then said:  ’Good night, my man.  I won’t wish, for your sake, that we changed places.  You would have to walk fifty miles to be in time for your father’s funeral.  Good night.’

‘You are it to look at!’ was the postillion’s comment, seeing my gentleman depart with great strides.  He did not speak offensively; rather, it seemed, to appease his conscience for the original mistake he had committed, for subsequently came, ’My oath on it, I don’t get took in again by a squash hat in a hurry!’

Unaware of the ban he had, by a sixpenny stamp, put upon an unoffending class, Evan went ahead, hearing the wheels of the chariot still dragging the road in his rear.  The postillion was in a dissatisfied state of mind.  He had asked and received more than his due.  But in the matter of his sweet self, he had been choused, as he termed it.  And my gentleman had baffled him, he could not quite tell how; but he had been got the better of; his sarcasms had not stuck, and returned to rankle in the bosom of their author.  As a Jew, therefore, may eye an erewhile bondsman who has paid the bill, but stands out against excess of interest on legal grounds, the postillion regarded Evan, of whom he was now abreast, eager for a controversy.

‘Fine night,’ said the postillion, to begin, and was answered by a short assent.  ‘Lateish for a poor man to be out—­don’t you think sir, eh?’

‘I ought to think so,’ said Evan, mastering the shrewd unpleasantness he felt in the colloquy forced on him.

‘Oh, you! you’re a gentleman!’ the postillion ejaculated.

‘You see I have no money.’

‘Feel it, too, sir.’

‘I am sorry you should be the victim.’

‘Victim!’ the postillion seized on an objectionable word.  ’I ain’t no victim, unless you was up to a joke with me, sir, just now.  Was that the game?’

Evan informed him that he never played jokes with money, or on men.

‘Cause it looks like it, sir, to go to offer a poor chap sixpence.’  The postillion laughed hollow from the end of his lungs.  ’Sixpence for a night’s work!  It is a joke, if you don’t mean it for one.  Why, do you know, sir, I could go—­there, I don’t care where it is!—­I could go before any magistrate livin’, and he’d make ye pay.  It’s a charge, as custom is, and he’d make ye pay.  Or p’rhaps you’re a goin’ on my generosity, and ‘ll say, he gev back that sixpence!  Well!  I shouldn’t a’ thought a gentleman’d make that his defence before a magistrate.  But there, my man! if it makes ye happy, keep it.  But you take my advice, sir.  When you hires a chariot, see you’ve got the shiners.  And don’t you go never again offerin’ a sixpence to a poor man for a night’s work.  They don’t like it.  It hurts their feelin’s.  Don’t you forget that, sir.  Lay that up in your mind.’