[Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray]@TWC D-Link bookVanity Fair CHAPTER VIII 2/18
Fancy an old, stumpy, short, vulgar, and very dirty man, in old clothes and shabby old gaiters, who smokes a horrid pipe, and cooks his own horrid supper in a saucepan. He speaks with a country accent, and swore a great deal at the old charwoman, at the hackney coachman who drove us to the inn where the coach went from, and on which I made the journey OUTSIDE FOR THE GREATER PART OF THE WAY. I was awakened at daybreak by the charwoman, and having arrived at the inn, was at first placed inside the coach.
But, when we got to a place called Leakington, where the rain began to fall very heavily--will you believe it ?--I was forced to come outside; for Sir Pitt is a proprietor of the coach, and as a passenger came at Mudbury, who wanted an inside place, I was obliged to go outside in the rain, where, however, a young gentleman from Cambridge College sheltered me very kindly in one of his several great coats. This gentleman and the guard seemed to know Sir Pitt very well, and laughed at him a great deal.
They both agreed in calling him an old screw; which means a very stingy, avaricious person.
He never gives any money to anybody, they said (and this meanness I hate); and the young gentleman made me remark that we drove very slow for the last two stages on the road, because Sir Pitt was on the box, and because he is proprietor of the horses for this part of the journey.
"But won't I flog 'em on to Squashmore, when I take the ribbons ?" said the young Cantab.
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