The coach being adjusted, another difficulty occurred--Mrs Tabitha absolutely refused to enter it again, unless another driver could be found to take the place of the postilion; who, she affirmed, had overturned the carriage from malice aforethought--After much dispute, the man resigned his place to a shabby country fellow, who undertook to go as far as Marlborough, where they could be better provided; and at that place we arrived about one O’clock, without farther impediment. Mrs Bramble, however, found new matter of offence; which, indeed, she has a particular genius for extracting at will from almost every incident in life. We had scarce entered the room at Marlborough, where we stayed to dine, when she exhibited a formal complaint against the poor fellow who had superseded the postilion. She said he was such a beggarly rascal that he had ne’er a shirt to his back, and had the impudence to shock her sight by shewing his bare posteriors, for which act of indelicacy he deserved to be set in the stocks. Mrs Winifred Jenkins confirmed the assertion, with respect to his nakedness, observing, at the same time, that he had a skin as fair as alabaster. ‘This is a heinous offence, indeed (cried my uncle) let us hear what the fellow has to say in his own vindication.’ He was accordingly summoned, and made his appearance, which was equally queer and pathetic. He seemed to be about twenty years of age, of a middling size, with bandy legs, stooping shoulders, high forehead, sandy locks, pinking eyes, flat nose, and long chin--but his complexion was of a sickly yellow; his looks denoted famine, and the rags that he wore could hardly conceal what decency requires to be covered--My uncle, having surveyed him attentively, said, with an ironical expression in his countenance, ‘An’t you ashamed, fellow, to ride postilion without a shirt to cover your backside from the view of the ladies in the coach?’ ‘Yes, I am, an please your noble honour (answered the man) but necessity has no law, as the saying is--And more than that, it was an accident. My breeches cracked behind, after I had got into the saddle’ ‘You’re an impudent varlet (cried Mrs Tabby) for presuming to ride before persons of fashion without a shirt’--‘I am so, an please your worthy ladyship (said he) but I am a poor Wiltshire lad--I ha’n’t a shirt in the world, that I can call my own, nor a rag of clothes, and please your ladyship, but what you see--I have no friend nor relation upon earth to help me out--I have had the fever and ague these six months, and spent all I had in the world upon doctors, and to keep soul and body together; and, saving your ladyship’s good presence, I han’t broke bread these four and twenty hours.’