CHAPTER XXXIX.
IN WHICH ANOTHER OLD FRIEND ENCOUNTERS SMIKE, VERY OPPORTUNELY AND TO SOME PURPOSE.
The night fraught with so much bitterness to one poor soul had given place to a bright and cloudless summer morning, when a north-country mail-coach traversed with cheerful noise the yet silent streets of Islington, and, giving brisk note of its approach with the lively winding of the guard's horn, clattered onward to its halting-place hard by the Post-office.
The only outside passenger was a burly honest-looking countryman upon the box, who, with his eyes fixed upon the dome of Saint Paul's Cathedral, appeared so wrapt in admiring wonder, as to be quite insensible to all the bustle of getting out the bags and parcels, until one of the coach windows being let sharply down, he looked round and encountered a pretty female face which was just then thrust out.
"See there, lass!" bawled the countryman, pointing towards the object of his admiration. "There be Paul's Church. 'Ecod, he be a soizable 'un, he be."
"Goodness, John! I shouldn't have thought it could have been half the size. What a monster!"
"Monsther!—Ye're aboot right there, I reckon, Mrs. Browdie," said the countryman good-humouredly, as he came slowly down in his huge top-coat, "and wa'at dost thee tak yon place to be noo—thot 'un ower the wa'. Ye'd never coora near it 'gin ye thried for twolve moonths. It's na' but a Poast-office. Ho! ho! They need to charge for dooble-latthers. A Poast-office! Wa'at dost thee think o' thot? 'Ecod, if thot's on'y a Poast-office, I'd loike to see where the Lord Mayor o' Lunnun lives."
So saying, John Browdie—for he it was—opened the coach-door, and tapping Mrs. Browdie, late Miss Price, on the cheek as he looked in, burst into a boisterous fit of laughter.
"Weel!" said John—"Dang my bootuns if she bea'nt asleep agean!"
"She's been asleep all night, and was all yesterday, except for a minute or two now and then," replied John Browdie's choice, "and I was very sorry when she woke, for she has been so cross!"
The subject of these remarks was a slumbering figure, so muffled in shawl and cloak that it would have been matter of impossibility to guess at its sex but for a brown-beaver bonnet and green veil which ornamented the head, and which, having been crushed and flattened for two hundred and fifty miles in that particular angle of the vehicle from which the lady's snores now proceeded, presented an appearance sufficiently ludicrous to have moved less risible muscles than those of John Browdie's ruddy face.
"Hollo!" cried John, twitching one end of the dragged veil. "Coom, wakken oop, will 'ee."
After several burrowings into the old corner, and many exclamations
