The cheery, noisy throng at the tables, the brisk coming and going of the servants, the smell of hot coffee, the open windows, and the sunshine outside-where the fresh team of the up night-coach were already tossing their heads impatiently-he wondered how it all struck her, new to such scenes and to this side of life. And then while he wondered he saw that she had risen from the table and was going out with one of the waiting-maids. To reach the door she had to pass near him; and, oh bliss, her eyes found him-and she blushed. She blushed, ye heavens! He saw it clearly, and he sat thinking about it until, though the coach was not due to start for another five minutes and he might count on the guard summoning him, he was taken with fear lest some one should steal his seat. And he hurried out.
She was alone on the top of the coach, and a youthful waterman, one of the crowd of loiterers below, was making eyes at her to the delight of his companions. When Vaughan came forth, "I'd like to be him," the wag said, winking with vulgar gusto. And the bystanders grinned at the good-looking young man who stood in the doorway buttoning up his box-coat. The position might soon have become embarrassing to her if not to him; but in the nick of time the eye of an inside passenger, who had followed him through the doorway, alighted on a huge placard which hung behind the coach.
"Take that down!" the stranger cried loudly and pompously. And in a moment all eyes were upon him. He prodded with his umbrella at the offending bill. "Do you hear me? Take it down, sir," he repeated, turning to the guard. He was a portly man, reddish about the gills. "Take it down, sir, or I will! It is disgraceful! I shall report this conduct to your employers."
The guard hesitated. "It don't harm you, sir," he pleaded, anxious, it was clear, to propitiate a man who would presently be good for half a crown.
"Don't harm me?" the choleric gentleman retorted. "Don't harm me? What's that to do with it? What right-what right have you, man, to put party filth like that on a public vehicle in which I pay to ride? 'The Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill!' D-n the Bill, sir!" with violence. "Take it down! Take it down at once!" he repeated, as if his order closed the matter.
The guard frowned at the placard, which bore, largely printed, the legend which the gentleman found so little to his taste. He rubbed his head. "Well, I don't know, sir," he said. And then-the crowd about the coach was growing-he looked at the driver. "What do you say, Sammy?" he asked.
"Don't touch it," growled the driver, without deigning to turn his head.
"You see, sir, it is this way," the guard ventured civilly. "Mr. Palmer has a Whig meeting at Reading to-day and the town will be full. And if we don't want rotten eggs and broken windows-we'll carry that!"
"I'll not travel with it!" the stout gentleman answered positively. "Do you hear me, man? If you don't take it down I will!"
"Best not!" cried a voice from the little crowd about the coach. And when the angry gentleman turned to see who spoke, "Best not!" cried another behind him. And he wheeled about again, so quickly that the crowd laughed. This raised his wrath to a white heat.
He grew purple. "I shall have it taken down!" he said. "Guard, remove it!"
"Don't touch it," growled the driver-one of a class noted in that day for independence and surly manners. "If the gent don't choose to travel with it, let him stop here and be d-d!"
"Do you know," the insulted passenger cried, "that I am a Member of Parliament?"
"I'm hanged if you are!" coachee retorted. "Nor won't be again!"
The crowd roared at this repartee. The guard was in despair. "Anyway, we must go on, sir," he said. And he seized his horn. "Take your seats, gents! Take your seats!" he cried. "All for Reading! I'm sorry, sir, but I've to think of the coach."
"And the horses!" grumbled the driver. "Where's the gent's sense?"
They all scrambled to their seats except the ex-member. He stood, bursting with rage and chagrin. But at the last moment, when he saw that the coach would really go without him, he swallowed his pride, plucked open the coach-door, and amid the loud jeers of the crowd, climbed in. The driver, with a chuckle, bade the helpers let go, and the coach swung cheerily away through the streets of Maidenhead, the merry notes of the horn and the rattle of the pole-chains drowning the cries of the gutter-boys.
The little Frenchman turned round. "You vill have a refolution," he said solemnly. "And the gentleman inside he vill lose his head."
The coachman, who had hitherto looked askance at Froggy, as if he disdained his neighbourhood, now squinted at him as if he could not quite make him out. "Think so?" he said gruffly. "Why, Mounseer?"
"I have no doubt," the Frenchman answered glibly. "The people vill have, and the nobles vill not give! Or they vill give a leetle-a leetle! And that is the worst of all. I have seen two refolutions!" he continued with energy. "The first when I was a child-it is forty years! My bonne held me up and I saw heads fall into the basket-heads as young and as lofly as the young Mees there! And why? Because the people would have, and the King, he give that which is the worst of all-a leetle! And the trouble began. And then the refolution of last year-it was worth to me all that I had! The people would have, and the Polignac, our Minister-who is the friend of your Vellington-he would not give at all! And the trouble began."
The driver squinted at him anew. "D'you mean to say," he asked, "that you've seen heads cut off?"
"I have seen the white necks, as white and as small as the Mees there; I have seen the blood spout from them; bah! like what you call pump! Ah, it was ogly, it was very ogly!"
The coachman turned his head slowly and with difficulty, until he commanded a full view of Vaughan's pretty neighbour; at whom he gazed for some seconds as if fascinated. Then he turned to his horses and relieved his feelings by hitting one of the wheelers below the trace; while Vaughan, willing to hear what the Frenchman had to say, took up the talk.
"Perhaps here," he said, "those who have will give, and give enough, and all will go well."
"Nefer! Nefer!" the Frenchman answered positively. "By example, the Duke whose château we pass-what you call it-Jerusalem House?"
"Sion House," Vaughan answered, smiling. "The Duke of Northumberland."
"By example he return four members to your Commons House. Is it not so? And they do what he tell them. He have this for his nefew, and that for his niece, and the other thing for his maître d'hôtel! And it is he and the others like him who rule the country! Gives he up all that? To the bourgeoisie? Nefer! Nefer!" he continued with emphasis. "He will be the Polignac! They will all be the Polignacs! And you will have a refolution. And by-and-by, when the bourgeoisie is frightened of the canaille and tired of the blood-letting, your Vellington he will be the Emperor. It is as plain as the two eyes in the face! So plain for me, I shall not take off my clothes the nights!"
"Well, King Billy for me!" said the driver. "But if he's willing, Mounseer, why shouldn't the people manage their own affairs?"
"The people! The people! They cannot! Your horses, will they govern themselves? Will you throw down the reins and leave it to them, up hill, down hill? The people govern themselves Bah!" And to express his extreme disgust at the proposition, the Frenchman, who had lost his all with Polignac, bent over the side and spat into the road. "It is no government at all!"
The driver looked darkly at his horses as if he would like to see them try it on. "I am afraid," said Vaughan, "that you think we are in trouble either way then, whether the Tories give or withhold?"
"Eizer way! Eizer way!" the Frenchman answered con amore. "It is fate! You are on the edge of the what you call it-chute! And you must go over! We have gone over. We