In the coach: aye to be sure; and the coach left the “Mermaid” in the village every Tuesday and Thursday at five in the morning. The coach! The splendid coach, a-swinging on its springs like a gigantic cradle; the postillions a-snapping their whips, the coachman a-cracking his long lash and a-shouting “All h’up for London!” and the ladies and gentlemen—well armed, these last, in dread of the highwaymen on the heath—all a-piling in and a-settling themselves; and the guards a-tooting their horns, the landlady and the boots and the maids and the hostlers all a-bowing and a-scraping and—off they go! for London town—where Percy was a-pining and a-dying for her, so her twin writ in his letter. Well, Lady Peggy went in, clapt on a fresh gown and shoes, and never was daughter more tender and patient with crabbed, gouty, crusty dad than she all through that lovely day. Playing backgammon; spelling out the newspaper; trouncing the cat when it jumped on His Lordship’s leg; blowing the fire; wheeling his chair from hither to yon; stroking the bald head; combing the white whiskers; and finally said she, “Daddy, London’s a very big sort of a place, now, isn’t it?” The Earl nods, coddling his leg into the slip of sunshine that’s walking westerly away from him. “My brother lodges, so he says, at the corner of Holywell Road and Lark Lane; tell me, dad, where should that be now?” Lady Peggy has a careless air, and flecks a buzzing fly out of His Lordship’s bowl of porridge. “Eh?” pursues she, “is’t for instance, in the city, or nigh London Bridge, or where the quality lives, or toward Southwark, or where?” “Rot me!” cries His Lordship, looking up at his daughter in surprise, “what’s my poppet got into her pretty head now, forsooth? Tut, tut, girl, what’s town to thee, or its bearings? hey? stick thy eye into thy churn an’ keep thy hand on the dasher,—’twere better’n all the shops in Piccadilly, or all the fops at Court.” “Slow, dad! I was only askin’ of my twin’s whereabouts. Shops and fops are not dizzyin’ your Peggy, you may swear; ’tis my brother, Sir, of whom I’d learn!” “’Twere better chase the scoundrel out’n my head, Peg, than hammer him in! A lad with every chance here in the county to raise his house, and make a good match with a nice plump girl, havin’ land joining his own; but no! Up and off to town to starve and scratch!” The Earl pommels the floor with his stick, causing the cat to leap into the air. “Let him die in want! Let him freeze, thirst, come to the gallows, say I! For such as leaves plenty to pursue want, gets no sympathy from me!”