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Chapter XLVII
Kit's mother and the single gentleman - upon whose track it is
expedient to follow with hurried steps, lest this history should be
chargeable with inconstancy, and the offence of leaving its characters
in situations of uncertainty and doubt - Kit's mother and the single
gentleman, speeding onward in the post-chaise- and-four whose
departure from the Notary's door we have already witnessed, soon left
the town behind them, and struck fire from the flints of the broad
highway.
The good woman, being not a little embarrassed by the novelty of her
situation, and certain material apprehensions that perhaps by this
time little Jacob, or the baby, or both, had fallen into the fire, or
tumbled down stairs, or had been squeezed behind doors, or had
scalded their windpipes in endeavouring to allay their thirst at the
spouts of tea-kettles, preserved an uneasy silence; and meeting from
the window the eyes of turnpike-men, omnibus-drivers, and others,
felt in the new dignity of her position like a mourner at a funeral, who,
not being greatly afflicted by the loss of the departed, recognizes his
every-day acquaintance from the window of the mourning coach, but
is constrained to preserve a decent solemnity, and the appearance of
being indifferent to all external objects.
To have been indifferent to the companionship of the single gentleman
would have been tantamount to being gifted with nerves of steel. Never
did chaise inclose, or horses draw, such a restless gentleman as he.
He never sat in the same position for two minutes together, but was
perpetually tossing his arms and legs about, pulling up the sashes
and letting them violently down, or thrusting his head out of one
window to draw it in again and thrust it out of another. He carried in
his pocket, too, a fire-box of mysterious and unknown construction;
and as sure as ever Kit's mother closed her eyes, so surely - whisk,
rattle, fizz - there was the single gentleman consulting his watch by a
flame of fire, and letting the sparks fall down among the straw as if
there were no such thing as a possibility of himself and Kit's mother
being roasted alive before the boys could stop their horses. Whenever
they halted to change, there he was - out of the carriage without
letting down the steps, bursting about the inn-yard like a lighted
cracker, pulling out his watch by lamp-light and forgetting to look at it
before he put it up again, and in short committing so many
extravagances that Kit's mother was quite afraid of him. Then, when
the horses were to, in he came like a Harlequin, and before they had
gone a mile, out came the watch and the fire-box together, and Kit's
mother as wide awake again, with no hope of a wink of sleep for that
stage.
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