Original Penny Readings: A Series of Short SketchesFenn, George Manville
General
Original Penny Readings: A Series of Short Sketches
Fenn, George Manville
Fiction; Short stories
"Co-o-o-o-me orn," said Cabby, as we sat by his side on the
box--"Co-o-o-me orn. Nice sorter day this here, sir. Thanky, sir; I do
draw a bit, and never sez `no' to a cigar. Arter you with the light,
sir. `Queer fares,' sir? Ah! I gets some queer sorter fares
sometimes--rum 'uns. All sorts and sizes, as the sayin' is. Taking a
poor gal to Bedlam ain't pleasant--they do screech so. Blest if I
couldn't ha' pitched into the keeper sometimes when I've heerd the poor
creetur crying out as she wasn't mad, and beggin' and praying of him to
let her go. It all seems agin natur, 'ticklar when a fellow's a bit
soft-like. It's now a year come Martlemas as one night a flunkey comes
up to the stand and picks me out, and werry glad I was, for I'd had a
awful bad day. I used to drive a mare then as I called `Bagged Sal,'
cos of her tail; for she hadn't got no tail--leastwise, none to speak
on. She'd been a 'tillery 'oss out in the Crimee--one of them as stood
in the front rank and got all the hair nibbled off, and the roots gnawed
so as to spile the cemetery for the future. But she could go, she
could, and get over the ground differun to this. Coome orn, will yer;
that ain't nothing! That's one of her games, sir. She pulls up short
every now and then, if I ain't watchin' her, jest as if she wanted to
pick up suthin' in the road. Well, sir, as I was a-saying, flunkey
seems to know a horse as could go, or else he wouldn't ha' choosed mine,
for she worn't at all ansum as you may suppose, besides bein' a
wherritty beast, allus twitchin' her stump of a tail outer the crupper,
and laying her ears back and biting. Flunkey hails me, and I pulls
outer the rank and picks him up.
"`Drive to Cavendish Square,' sez he.
"Now, he wasn't a reg'lar thoroughbred flunkey, all white gloves,
stockings and powder, with a long cane and crestys on his buttons, but
one o' yer pepper-an'-salt doctor's men, all white choker and cheek, and
not arf so affable as a real footman. He was one of them chaps as keeps
the patients waiting in the back parly till they tips him, and then he
finds out all of a sudden as the doctor ain't engaged. Lord, sir, I've
waited hours in Saville-Row for poor innercent creeturs as didn't know
the wally of a trifle, and so spent a hextry five shillings in cab fare.
"`Drive to Cavendish Square,' sez he, as big as yer please and then he
begins a-whistling, and a-staring at all the gals as we passes. My lord
hadn't a word to say to me, yer know, being only a kebby, and not up to
his social spear in society; but I begins to pump him a little--movin'
the handle quite gentle like at first, for he wouldn't suck a bit; but
bimeby I works him round, and out flows such a bright stream of
eloquence, and he begins to tell me where we was a-going to and who we
was a-going to take; and then I finds as it was a young lady to a
private asylum, for she was allus a-trying to kill herself, and all
through love.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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