the forenoon, the head drawer at the Royal George

Hotel opened the coach-door as his custom was. He did

it with some flourish of ceremony, for a mail journey from London

in winter was an achievement to congratulate an adventurous

traveller upon.

By that time, there was only one adventurous traveller left to be

congratulated: for the two others had been set down at their

respective roadside destinations. The mildewy inside of the coach,

with its damp and dirty straw, its disagreeable smell, and its

obscurity, was rather like a larger dog-kennel. Mr. Lorry, the

passenger, shaking himself out of it in chains of straw, a tangle of

shaggy wrapper, flapping hat, and muddy legs, was rather like a

larger sort of dog.

“There will be a packet to Calais, tomorrow, drawer?”

“Yes, sir, if the weather holds and the wind sets tolerable fair.

The tide will serve pretty nicely at about two in the afternoon, sir.

Bed, sir?”

“I shall not go to bed till night; but I want a bedroom, and a

barber.”

“And then breakfast, sir? Yes, sir, That way, sir, if you please.

Show Concord! Gentleman’s valise and hot water to Concord. Pull

off gentleman’s boots in Concord. (You will find a fine sea-coal fire,

sir.) Fetch barber to Concord. Stir about there, now, for Concord!”

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

The Concord bed-chamber being always assigned to a

passenger by the mail, and passengers by the mail being always

heavily wrapped up from head to foot, the room had the odd

interest for the establishment of the Royal George, that although

but one kind of man was seen to go into it, all kinds and varieties

of men came out of it. Consequently, another drawer, and two

porters, and several maids and the landlady, were all loitering by

accident at various points of the road between the Concord and

the coffee-room, when a gentleman of sixty, formally dressed in a

brown suit of clothes, pretty well worn, but very well kept, with

large square cuffs and large flaps to the pockets, passed along on

his way to his breakfast.

The coffee-room had no other occupant, that forenoon, than the

gentleman in brown. His breakfast-table was drawn before the

fire, and as he sat, with its light shining on him, waiting for the

meal, he sat so still, that he might have been sitting for his portrait.

Very orderly and methodical he looked, with a hand on each

knee, and a loud watch ticking a sonorous sermon under his

flapped waistcoat, as though it pitted its gravity and longevity

against the levity and evanescence of the brisk fire. He had a good

leg, and was a little vain of it, for his brown stockings fitted sleek

and close, and were of a fine texture; his shoes and buckles, too,

though plain, were trim. He wore an odd little sleek crisp flaxen

wig, setting very close to his head: which wig, it is to be presumed,

was made of hair, but which looked far more as though it were

spun from filaments of silk or glass. His linen, though not of a