"We _must_ stay here," said one of the drivers. "Why, I haven't got my things!--what can I do, Faddle, without my things? I haven't even a clean cambric handkerchief, nor a tooth-brush!" It was too true: it had appeared so easy to have his "_things_" unpacked and placed on his dressing-table the moment he arrived at Dover, that literally nothing had been provided. Intense cold soon drove Lord John into the hut; from which, however, his first impulse was to emerge again, so execrable were the fumes of bad tobacco, and so odious the group which preoccupied the low chamber. "Walk in and welcome," cried a tipsy waggoner; "we be all friends." "Oh, faith!" said an Irish _lady_, whose husband, a "needy knife-grinder," was asleep on the floor, "he's a rale gintleman, and I'll give him a sate by myself, and p'raps he'll trate me to a drop of comfort." Lord John felt exceedingly sick; and, choking with anger and tobacco-smoke, he turned to the ragged lad of the house, and ordered a private room. "There be no room, sir, but this here, besides that there up the ladder." "Up there, then," said his lordship, approaching it. "No, but ye can't though," said the lad interposing: "mother and sister's asleep up there, and the waggoner's wife, and all the females except she as sits there, by the fire." Lord John paused; he could not invade the territory of the fair sex: what was to be done? "Can't I have a bed?" "There _be_ some dry straw left, I take it: I'll go and see, and give you a shake down here, and welcome." "A shake down!" groaned his lordship, "Faddle!" "Yes, my lord." "Where are you?" "Here--dying, I believe; I never was so ill!" and there in truth lay Faddle, rolling on the bare floor. "I say, Mother Murphy," said the tipsy Waggoner, "that ere chap's a lord!" "They be going to do away wi' them, I hear," said the Radical knife-grinder, waking up; "and a good job too;--werry useless fellors, I take it." "Bless his pretty face!" said the Irish lady: "exchange is no robbery; and I'd gi' him a kiss for a drop of the cratur." "You be hung!" cried her husband, throwing a stool at her head; "you've had too much already." The fair representative of Hibernia was not to be put upon; up she started, and there was a pitched battle between her and her husband, which ended in the fall of both. Unused to fatigue, Lord John at last threw himself on his straw. But what a night did he pass! the noise, the smell, the discomfort, the fleas--oh! By many will the last week of 1836 be long remembered, but by none with greater horror than by the Right Honourable Lord John Lavender.