City and town life -- Fiction; Urban poor -- Fiction
Mrs Winks turned to re-enter the shop, but she was calculating too much,
for D. Wragg did not set her at liberty until he had called and recalled
her to the very end of the street, to warn her about the rats--about
that there pair of fancy rabbits--and lastly, to tell her to be sure and
not forget about the spannle.
"Now, don't you make no mistake about that there dorg, for that there's
the particularist part of it all."
"There! drat the man! what does he mean dragging me away like this?"
puffed the dame, fiercely; and, heedless of a shouted order sent flying
after her as the four-wheeler turned the corner, she made her way back
to the shop, while D. Wragg urged on his horse, working hard at his
driving, so as to reach the country for a day of pleasure.
The pleasure was in anticipation, but there was a shade on the brow of
both girls, as they seemed to feel the coming of what was to be to one a
stroke that should make a tender heart to ache with bitter misery--to
bring forth confession upon confession, and to waken both to the fact
that there are dreams of the day as well as dreams of the night--dreams
of our waking moments as well as dreams when the body is steeped in
sleep.
But now, they were still in Decadia, with D. Wragg--no very skilful
driver--urging on his horse as he applied the whip and jerked the reins,
telling it "not to make no mistake, for he was behind it."
"Come on, will you?" cried D. Wragg, to increase the speed. Result: the
angular horse wagged its tail.
On he went, however, stumbling slowly along, bowing his head in sympathy
with a halting leg; and they proceeded through the least frequented
streets, D. Wragg being influenced in his choice of them by his want of
confidence in himself as a driver.
On still, past the parts where the shops began to look new, but blighted
as to trade; where the houses were more thinly scattered, until they had
attained to their object of being in the country, when the horse was
allowed to take its own pace.
It was not a pleasant pace; for there was, when he went slowly, too much
turning of the head, and dragging along of one of the hind legs; while,
when apparently startled to find that he was doing but little more than
keeping up with the pedestrians on either side of the road, he started
off for a hundred yards in a sharper trot, it was made unmusical by the
clink, clink of shoe against shoe as the poor brute overstepped itself.
But in spite of these failings, the party in the four-wheeler seemed
perfectly content, for they were progressing; suburban residences, with
their pleasant green parterres and shrubberies, were gliding by them on
either hand, so that there was always something new to notice; and
besides, were they not leaving behind the misery, the dirt, and squalor
of the Great City?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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