It would be cheap; properly broached, it might even cost nothing, and, after years of mittens and hygienic flannel, his heart leaped out to meet the notion of exposure.
Mr Chandler was perhaps a little puzzled to find so old a gentleman, so strangely clothed, and begging for a lift on so retired a roadside.
But he was a good-natured man, glad to do a service, and so he took the stranger up; and he had his own idea of civility, and so he asked no questions.

Silence, in fact, was quite good enough for Mr Chandler; but the cart had scarcely begun to move forward ere he found himself involved in a one-sided conversation.
'I can see,' began Mr Finsbury, 'by the mixture of parcels and boxes that are contained in your cart, each marked with its individual label, and by the good Flemish mare you drive, that you occupy the post of carrier in that great English system of transport which, with all its defects, is the pride of our country.' 'Yes, sir,' returned Mr Chandler vaguely, for he hardly knew what to reply; 'them parcels posts has done us carriers a world of harm.' 'I am not a prejudiced man,' continued Joseph Finsbury.

'As a young man I travelled much.

Nothing was too small or too obscure for me to acquire.

At sea I studied seamanship, learned the complicated knots employed by mariners, and acquired the technical terms.