Crisparkle could hardly see anything else of it
for a large outside passenger seated on the box, with his elbows
squared, and his hands on his knees, compressing the driver into a
most uncomfortably small compass, and glowering about him with a
strongly-marked face.
'Is this Cloisterham?' demanded the passenger, in a tremendous
voice.
'It is,' replied the driver, rubbing himself as if he ached, after
throwing the reins to the ostler. 'And I never was so glad to see
it.'
'Tell your master to make his box-seat wider, then,' returned the
passenger. 'Your master is morally bound--and ought to be legally,
under ruinous penalties--to provide for the comfort of his fellow-
man.'
The driver instituted, with the palms of his hands, a superficial
perquisition into the state of his skeleton; which seemed to make
him anxious.
'Have I sat upon you?' asked the passenger.
'You have,' said the driver, as if he didn't like it at all.
'Take that card, my friend.'
'I think I won't deprive you on it,' returned the driver, casting
his eyes over it with no great favour, without taking it. 'What's
the good of it to me?'
'Be a Member of that Society,' said the passenger.
'What shall I get by it?' asked the driver.
'Brotherhood,' returned the passenger, in a ferocious voice.
'Thankee,' said the driver, very deliberately, as he got down; 'my
mother was contented with myself, and so am I.
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