“I alluded, my good fellow, to Nelson, the wonder of the maritime world--the dauntless leader when yard was opposed to yard, and seas teemed with blood.” “We’re all right--as right as a trivet,” said the coachman, after a pause of perplexity; “I thought our notions were getting rather wide apart, and that one of us wanted putting straight; but I see what you mean, and quite go along with your opinion, step for step. To be sure, Mrs. Nelson has done the world and all for coaching; and the Wonder _is_ the crack of all the drags in London, and so is the Dauntless, let yard turn out agin yard, as you say, any day you like. And as for leaders, and teams full of blood, there’s as pretty a sprinkling of blood in the tits I’m now tooling of--” “The vehicles of the proprietress, and the appearance of the animals, with their corresponding caparisons,” said I, “have often gratified my visual organs and elicited my mental plaudits.” “That’s exactly what _I_ says,” replied the coachman, very briskly, “there’s no humbug nor no nonsense about Mrs. Nelson. You never see her a standing a-foaming and fretting in front o’ the Bank, with a regular mob round her, and looking as if she’d bolt with the Quicksilver. And you never see her painted all over her body, wherever there’s room for ’em, with Saracen Heads, and Blue Boars, and Brown Bears, from her roller bolts to her dicky and hind boot. She’s plain and neat, and nothin’ else--and is fondest of having her body of a claret colour, pick’d out with white, and won’t suffer the Bull, no where, except on the back-gammon board.” I know not how much further the whimsical description might have gone, if a strapping, capless, curly-headed lass, running with all her might and main, had not addressed a screaming retainer to the coachman. With some difficulty he pulled up, for he had been tacitly giving me a proof that the craft of _his_ Nelson was a first-rate, with regard to its rate of travelling. “If you please, Mr. Stevens,” said the panting damsel, holding up something towards the box--“if you please, Mr. Stevens, mother’s gone to Lonnon--in the light cart--and will you be so kind as to give her--her linchpin.” Mr. Stevens took the article with a smile, and I fancied with a sly squeeze of the hand that delivered it. “If such a go had been anyone’s but your mother’s, Fanny,” he slyly remarked, “I should have said it was somebody in love.” The Dispatch was too strictly timed to allow of further parley; the horses broke, or were rather broken, into a gallop, in pursuit of the mother of Fanny, the Flower of Waltham; and the pin secretly acting as a spur, we did the next five mile in something like twenty minutes.