CHAPTER IV.
"Let the steam-pot hiss till it's hot,
Give me the speed of the Tantivy trot."
Coaching Song, by R. E. E. Warburton, Esq.
"Now, sir, time to get up, if you please. Tally-ho coach for Leicester'll be round in half an hour, and don't wait for nobody." So spake the Boots of the Peacock Inn, Islington, at half-past two o'clock on the morning of a day in the early part of November, 183-, giving Tom at the same time a shake by the shoulder, and then putting down a candle and carrying off his shoes to clean.
Tom and his father had arrived in town from Berkshire the day before, and finding, on inquiry, that the Birmingham coaches which ran from the city did not pass through Rugby, but deposited their passengers at Dunchurch, a village three miles distant on the main road, where said passengers had to wait for the Oxford and Leicester coach in the evening, or to take a post-chaise—had resolved that Tom should travel down by the Tally-ho, which diverged from the main road and passed through Rugby itself. And as the Tally-ho was an early coach, they had driven out to the Peacock to be on the road.
Tom had never been in London, and would have liked to have stopped at the Belle Savage, where they had been put down by the Star, just at dusk,
F
