The Absentee by Maria Edgeworth

Author:Maria Edgeworth
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Europe, History
ISBN: 9781440038105
Publisher: Forgotten Books
Published: 2012-07-01T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER X

Towards the evening of the second day's journey, the driver of Lord Colambre's hackney chaise stopped, and jumping off the wooden bar, on which he had been seated, exclaimed—

'We're come to the bad step, now. The bad road's beginning upon us, please your honour.'

'Bad road! that is very uncommon in this country. I never saw such fine roads as you have in Ireland.'

'That's true; and God bless your honour, that's sensible of that same, for it's not what all the foreign quality I drive have the manners to notice. God bless your honour! I heard you're a Welshman, but whether or no, I am sure you are a gentleman, anyway, Welsh or other.'

Notwithstanding the shabby greatcoat, the shrewd postillion perceived, by our hero's language, that he was a gentleman. After much dragging at the horses' heads, and pushing and lifting, the carriage was got over what the postillion said was the worst part of THE BAD STEP; but as the road 'was not yet to say good,' he continued walking beside the carriage.

'It's only bad just hereabouts, and that by accident,' said he, 'on account of there being no jantleman resident in it, nor near; but only a bit of an under-agent, a great little rogue, who gets his own turn out of the roads, and of everything else in life. I, Larry Brady, that am telling your honour, have a good right to know, for myself, and my father, and my brother. Pat Brady, the wheelwright, had once a farm under him; but was ruined, horse and foot, all along with him, and cast out, and my brother forced to fly the country, and is now working in some coachmaker's yard, in London; banished he is!—and here am I, forced to be what I am—and now that I'm reduced to drive a hack, the agent's a curse to me still, with these bad roads, killing my horses and wheels and a shame to the country, which I think more of—Bad luck to him!'

'I know your brother; he lives with Mr. Mordicai, in Long Acre, in London.'

'Oh, God bless you for that!'

They came at this time within view of a range of about four-and-twenty men and boys, sitting astride on four-and-twenty heaps of broken stones, on each side of the road; they were all armed with hammers, with which they began to pound with great diligence and noise as soon as they saw the carriage. The chaise passed between these batteries, the stones flying on all sides.

'How are you, Jem?—How are you, Phil?' said Larry. 'But hold your hand, can't ye, while I stop and get the stones out of the horses' FEET. So you're making up the rent, are you, for St. Dennis?'

'Whoosh!' said one of the pounders, coming close to the postillion, and pointing his thumb back towards the chaise. 'Who have you in it?'

'Oh, you need not scruple, he's a very honest man; he's only a man from North Wales, one Mr. Evans, an innocent jantleman, that's sent over to travel up and down the country, to find is there any copper mines in it.

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