At Kingston we had better take Mr. Shoolbred's "New Times" coach to Guildford. That is to say, if we can find a seat; for this popular drive is patronized so extensively that booking is brisk throughout the coaching season. At eleven o'clock punctually, on every week-day forenoon in the heyday of the year, the "New Times" starts from the "Berkeley" Hotel, Piccadilly. The fame of this sole survivor of the Guildford coaches is of no mere mushroom growth, for it is now over twenty years since Mr. Walter Shoolbred first drove his own teams over this road, so that to-day he is become an institution. Time was (and that but a few years since) when a Portsmouth coach was the delight of the road; but Captain Hargreaves' "Rocket" no longer enlivens the way, and, below Guildford, the Portsmouth Road is unexploited. To-day we fare no farther behind our four-in-hand than Mr. Shoolbred can take us, and he has the route entirely to himself. [Sidenote: _DITTON MARSH_] It is but rarely that this "well-appointed coach"--to speak after the manner of advertisements--leaves London without a full load or an admiring crowd of onlookers to witness its departure, and you feel yourself (wrongly, it may well be) an essential part of the performance, as, perched on the box-seat beside the driver, you are driven through the thronging traffic of a May morning in Piccadilly. Not until the streets of London are left behind us do the clean-limbed chestnuts of our team have the opportunity of showing their paces; but Kingston Vale is done smartly, and Kingston itself reached at 12.8. Presently we are out upon Ditton Marsh, flat and broad and sombre, and we bowl along here at a fine round pace until we reach the foot of the ascent where, outside a roadside public-house--the "Orleans Arms"--stands a huge stone post, a century old, carved with the names and distances of many towns and villages, and known as the "White Lady" milestone. [Illustration: ROAD AND RAIL: DITTON MARSH, NIGHT.] [Illustration: MR. WALTER SHOOLBRED.]