The cheery, noisy throng at the tables, the brisk coming and going of the servants, the smell of hot coffee, the open windows, and the sunshine outside—where the fresh team of the up night-coach were already tossing their heads impatiently—he wondered how it all struck her, new to such scenes and to this side of life. And then while he wondered he saw that she had risen from the table and was going out with one of the waiting-maids. To reach the door she had to pass near him; and, oh bliss, her eyes found him—and she blushed. She blushed, ye heavens! He saw it clearly, and he sat thinking about it until, though the coach was not due to start for another five minutes and he might count on the guard summoning him, he was taken with fear lest some one should steal his seat. And he hurried out. She was alone on the top of the coach, and a youthful waterman, one of the crowd of loiterers below, was making eyes at her to the delight of his companions. When Vaughan came forth, “I’d like to be him,” the wag said, winking with vulgar gusto. And the bystanders grinned at the good-looking young man who stood in the doorway buttoning up his box-coat. The position might soon have become embarrassing to her if not to him; but in the nick of time the eye of an inside passenger, who had followed him through the doorway, alighted on a huge placard which hung behind the coach. “Take that down!” the stranger cried loudly and pompously. And in a moment all eyes were upon him. He prodded with his umbrella at the offending bill. “Do you hear me? Take it down, sir,” he repeated, turning to the guard. He was a portly man, reddish about the gills. “Take it down, sir, or I will! It is disgraceful! I shall report this conduct to your employers.” The guard hesitated. “It don’t harm you, sir,” he pleaded, anxious, it was clear, to propitiate a man who would presently be good for half a crown. “Don’t harm me?” the choleric gentleman retorted. “Don’t harm me? What’s that to do with it? What right—what right have you, man, to put party filth like that on a public vehicle in which I pay to ride? ‘The Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill!’ D—n the Bill, sir!” with violence. “Take it down! Take it down at once!” he repeated, as if his order closed the matter. The guard frowned at the placard, which bore, largely printed, the legend which the gentleman found so little to his taste. He rubbed his head. “Well, I don’t know, sir,” he said. And then—the crowd about the coach was growing—he looked at the driver. “What do you say, Sammy?” he asked. “Don’t touch it,” growled the driver, without deigning to turn his head. “You see, sir, it is this way,” the guard ventured civilly. “Mr. Palmer has a Whig meeting at Reading to-day and the town will be full. And if we don’t want rotten eggs and broken windows—we’ll carry that!” “I’ll not travel with it!” the stout gentleman answered positively. “Do you hear me, man? If you don’t take it down I will!”