which I was packed – like game – and forwarded, carriage paid, to
the Cross Keys, Wood-street, Cheapside, London? There was no other
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inside passenger, and I consumed my sandwiches in solitude and
dreariness, and it rained hard all the way, and I thought life
sloppier than I had expected to find it.
With this tender remembrance upon me, I was cavalierly shunted back
into Dullborough the other day, by train. My ticket had been
previously collected, like my taxes, and my shining new portmanteau
had had a great plaster stuck upon it, and I had been defied by Act
of Parliament to offer an objection to anything that was done to
it, or me, under a penalty of not less than forty shillings or more
than five pounds, compoundable for a term of imprisonment. When I
had sent my disfigured property on to the hotel, I began to look
about me; and the first discovery I made, was, that the Station had
swallowed up the playing-field.
It was gone. The two beautiful hawthorn-trees, the hedge, the
turf, and all those buttercups and daisies, had given place to the
stoniest of jolting roads: while, beyond the Station, an ugly dark
monster of a tunnel kept its jaws open, as if it had swallowed them
and were ravenous for more destruction. The coach that had carried
me away, was melodiously called Timpson’s Blue-Eyed Maid, and
belonged to Timpson, at the coach-office up-street; the locomotive
engine that had brought me back, was called severely No. 97, and
belonged to S.E.R., and was spitting ashes and hot water over the
blighted ground.
When I had been let out at the platform-door, like a prisoner whom
his turnkey grudgingly released, I looked in again over the low
wall, at the scene of departed glories. Here, in the haymaking
time, had I been delivered from the dungeons of Seringapatam, an
immense pile (of haycock), by my own countrymen, the victorious
British (boy next door and his two cousins), and had been
recognised with ecstasy by my affianced one (Miss Green), who had
come all the way from England (second house in the terrace) to
ransom me, and marry me. Here, had I first heard in confidence,
from one whose father was greatly connected, being under
Government, of the existence of a terrible banditti, called ‘The
Radicals,’ whose principles were, that the Prince Regent wore
stays, and that nobody had a right to any salary, and that the army
and navy ought to be put down – horrors at which I trembled in my
bed, after supplicating that the Radicals might be speedily taken
and hanged. Here, too, had we, the small boys of Boles’s, had that
cricket match against the small boys of Coles’s, when Boles and
Coles had actually met upon the ground, and when, instead of
instantly hitting out at one another with the utmost fury, as we
had all hoped and expected, those sneaks had said respectively, ‘I
hope Mrs. Boles is well,’ and ‘I hope Mrs. Coles and the baby are
doing charmingly.’ Could it be that, after all this, and much
more, the Playing-field was a Station, and No. 97 expectorated
boiling water and redhot cinders on it, and the whole belonged by
Act of Parliament to S.E.R.?
As it could be, and was, I left the place with a heavy heart for a
walk all over the town. And first of Timpson’s up-street. When I
departed from Dullborough in the strawy arms of Timpson’s Blue-Eyed
Maid, Timpson’s was a moderate-sized coach-office (in fact, a
little coach-office), with an oval transparency in the window,
which looked beautiful by night, representing one of Timpson’s
coaches in the act of passing a milestone on the London road with
great velocity, completely full inside and out, and all the
passengers dressed in the first style of fashion, and enjoying
themselves tremendously. I found no such place as Timpson’s now –
no such bricks and rafters, not to mention the name – no such
edifice on the teeming earth. Pickford had come and knocked
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Timpson’s down. Pickford had not only knocked Timpson’s down, but