His feeling of accumulated annoyance vanished on realising the instant result. Here he was, in the very centre of the old-fashioned winter he had ordered, stamping up and down in the snow that powdered the courtyard; through the archway he identified the main thoroughfare as Holborn. A cheerful cloud and an agreeable scent of coffee came from the doorway, and through the doorway came also at intervals apprehensive travellers, who gave a look of relief on discovering that the stage coach had not set off without them. Ostlers brought sturdy horses from the stables, horses that seemed anxious to do right, but somehow failed at every point to conciliate the men, who on their side did not attempt to hide opinions. The youth advanced across the cobble-stones and inquired at what hour the stage coach was supposed to start; the ostler gave an answer almost identical in terms with the fierce denunciation used to the animals. The coarseness staggered him until he remembered the year, and the absence of education in the lives of the class to which the ostler belonged. He turned to speak to the driver. “Not what I call cold,” answered the driver, snatching a piece of straw from a truss and starting to chew it. “Remember January in ’27?” “Can’t say I do.” “That was a teaser,” said the coachman. He gave four slaps to each shoulder. “Snowed up jest afore we got to Reading. No chance of escape. Not a bit of food after the third day. Fortunately, the guard was a plumpish man; Tom Bates his name was; the chap who’s with us to-day is thin, I’m sorry to say. Bates’s widow took it very well, considerin’ how onreasonable some women are. Course, the passengers made a collection for her. Tottled up poor Tom, they did, and paid for him at the rate of eightpence a pound. As she very properly remarked, it isn’t every widow that can say of her late husband that he was worth his weight in copper.” The young man offered his cigar-case, and the driver, with a dexterous scoop, took the whole of the contents and dropped them into one of his enormous pockets. “It’s the outside passengers that suffer most,” the driver went on. “You recollect that case of a gen’leman on the box-seat a year ago this very day? Don’t say you never ’eerd tell of him! He belonged to a banking firm in Lombard Street, and he started, just as you might, from this very spot, cheerful and warm and as pleased with himself as anybody could wish to be. Talked a bit at first, but before we were ten miles out he had left off, and when we got twenty miles out I gave him a jerk with the butt end of my whip like this, and— What do you think?” “I should imagine that he resented the impertinence.” “He might have done all that you say,” remarked the driver, slapping one of the horses, “only he was froze. Froze stiff.” “Bless my soul!” cried the young man. “What a shocking end!”