It so happened that, on the day when the New Doctor was to arrive, I could not compose myself exactly to my usual after-dinner nap, all owing to that fool of a servant, who will never learn to send up a dinner properly; and so I took my stick, and clopped away down to the White Hart, to try whether a glass of gin-and-water would do me good; and it so happened, oddly enough, that I got down there just exactly at the time the omnibus usually arrives. For you must know that the old respectable coach, which lingered with us after it had disappeared from the rest of the world, is gone at length, and its place is usurped by one of those vile innovations, an omnibus—or ’bus, as it is called in the wretched jargon of the present day. I hate those sneaking low-lifed things more than I do the very railways themselves, which they are employed to attend on. And so, instead of the handsome stylish coach, that a gentleman might ride on without shame, with its dashing four-in-hand, we have got this dirty, shabby, yellow thing, with its unicorn team of skin and bone, a driver that old Jack Simons, the coachman, would not have had for a stable-helper, and an urchin for guard, who would be a disgrace to a dung-cart! As I made my way down the street, it was easy to see, by the unusual number of people out, that something strange was expected. Peters, of course, was at the hotel door; but then he always is there when the ’bus arrives, for he fancies that he is great upon the subject of horses; and every day, like a fool, throws away threepence or fourpence, which I know he can ill afford, in drink for the driver, who knows nearly as little about horse-flesh as he does himself, in order that he may talk to him about the leader’s mouth, and the off wheeler’s shoulder, and Hobb’s colt, and that young mare of Timmins’s. He was there as a matter of course, and so was Paul, who is just as regular an attendant, and waits about every day to see who comes and who goes, and what parcels there are, and whom they are for, and how much there is to pay on them. These two never miss; but that old woman, Gabriel Mullins, was there also, waiting to see the “New Doctor,” that he might go _gabble-gabble_ about him all over the place. And Muggins, whom no man ever saw, except on Sundays, with his coat or without his apron, was standing outside his shop-door, with his hands in his pockets, and that perpetual smirk upon his countenance, looking out for the ’bus. While Cox, the bookseller and stationer, who must, I am sure, live upon the smell of his wares, for nobody in Mudford, as far as I can see, ever reads or writes, was peering out between those eternal prints in his window, making belief that he was too busy, or too much above vulgar curiosity, to come and look out openly and honestly like Muggins. It takes me some time to get down to the White Hart, so that I had leisure to look about me; and I saw the two Miss MacClinkers, the Surveyor’s daughters, walking down the