Billy—old Billy that is to say—was quite struck in a heap at such an unwonted apparition, and after the then usual salutations, and inquiries how she would like to have the window, he popped the old question, “How far was she going?” with very different feelings to what it was generally asked, when the traveller wished to calculate how soon he might hope to get rid of his _vis-à-vis_ and lay up his legs on the seat. “To town,” replied the lady, dimpling her pretty cheeks with a smile. “And you?” asked she, thinking to have as good as she gave. “Ditto,” replied the delighted Billy, divesting himself of a great coarse blue and white worsted comforter, and pulling up his somewhat dejected gills, abandoning the idea of economising his Lincoln and Bennett by the substitution of an old Gregory’s mixture coloured fur cap, with its great ears tied over the top, in which he had snoozed and snored through many a long journey. Miss Willing then drew from her richly-buckled belt a beautiful Geneva watch set round with pearls, (her ladyship’s, which she was taking to town to have repaired), and Billy followed suit with his substantial gold-repeater, with which he struck the hour. Miss then ungloved the other hand, and passed it down her glossy brown hair, all smooth and regular, for she had just been scrutinising it in a pocket-mirror she had in her gold-embroidered reticule. Billy’s commercial soul was in ecstacies, and he was fairly over head and ears in love before they came to the first change of horses. He had never seen sich a sample of a hand before, no, nor sich a face; and he felt quite relieved when among the multiplicity of rings he failed to discover that thin plain gold one that intimates so much. Whatever disadvantages old stage coaches possessed, and their name certainly was legion, it must be admitted that in a case of this sort their slowness was a recommendation. The old True Blue Independent did not profess to travel or trail above eight miles an hour, and this it only accomplished under favourable circumstances, such as light loads, good roads, and stout steeds, instead of the top-heavy cargo that now ploughed along the woolly turnpike after the weak, jaded horses, that seemed hardly able to keep their legs against the keen careering wind. If, under such circumstances, the wretched concern made the wild-beast-show looking place in London, called an inn, where it put up, an hour or an hour and a half or so after its time, it was said to be all very well, “considering,”—and this, perhaps, in a journey of sixty miles.