In this elegant and epoch-making vehicle the non-human freight overflowing from the fore and hind boots was stacked on the roof, though the lucky first-comer had always space to sit beside Will and hear his stories of the great world. A shipmate from ’Frisco had boasted of driving in kid gloves a polished silk-lined cab and spanking fifteen-hundred-dollar steeds with silver-gleaming harness, and earning his three hundred dollars a month. The vision beglamoured Will’s own status on the box, and reconciled him to lifting the luggage of his labouring inferiors. He aped it by driving in his best Moses & Son suit, as though more of a sporting charioteer than a menial, touting for custom. And parcels and clients flung themselves into his arms. What wonder if the high-piled load soon out-topped Jinny’s, revealed in its nakedness on these sweltering days when she drove without her tilt! For gradually folk’s eyes seemed opened, unsealed of a spell. Without a word spoken it was as if something unnatural and monstrous had been wafted away, and the simple order of nature—in the shape of a male carrier—had been restored. Without being quite conscious of how they had lugged their own boxes for the puny female, customers were aware of a new facility. They did not so much turn against Jinny as forget her in this gravitation to the natural centre. At first Will had—with a touch of considerateness—fixed his days on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays, not to clash with Jinny’s Tuesdays and Fridays. But as his supply created new demands, as he found he could widen his ambit as far even as Brandy Hole Creek or Blackripple, he took on new circuits, first for Tuesday and then for Friday and dropping his Wednesdays to give his hard-worked horses a solid rest in mid-week. It was not these new routes of his that galled Jinny, nor his impinging on her days—possibly she was not altogether displeased to meet the rival vehicle. No, the iron that entered her soul was the loss of her previous customers, who, despite Will’s comparative magnanimity, had changed their day to suit the rival round. In the cases where she had imagined herself a friend rather than an employee, it was heart-breaking.