Chapter XLVI

Records A Touching Act Of Delicate Feeling, Not Unmixed With

Pleasantry, Achieved And Performed By Messrs. Dodson And Fogg

It was within a week of the close of the month of July, that a hackney

cabriolet, number unrecorded, was seen to proceed at a rapid pace up

Goswell Street; three people were squeezed into it besides the driver,

who sat in his own particular little dickey at the side; over the apron

were hung two shawls, belonging to two small vixenish-looking ladies

under the apron; between whom, compressed into a very small

compass, was stowed away, a gentleman of heavy and subdued

demeanour, who, whenever he ventured to make an observation, was

snapped up short by one of the vixenish ladies before-mentioned.

Lastly, the two vixenish ladies and the heavy gentleman were giving

the driver contradictory directions, all tending to the one point, that

he should stop at Mrs. Bardell's door; which the heavy gentleman, in

direct opposition to, and defiance of, the vixenish ladies, contended

was a green door and not a yellow one.

Stop at the house with a green door, driver,' said the heavy

gentleman.

'Oh! You perwerse creetur!' exclaimed one of the vixenish ladies. 'Drive

to the 'ouse with the yellow door, cabmin.'

Upon this the cabman, who in a sudden effort to pull up at the house

with the green door, had pulled the horse up so high that he nearly

pulled him backward into the cabriolet, let the animal's fore-legs down

to the ground again, and paused.

Now vere am I to pull up?' inquired the driver. 'Settle it among

yourselves. All I ask is, vere?'

Here the contest was renewed with increased violence; and the horse

being troubled with a fly on his nose, the cabman humanely employed

his leisure in lashing him about on the head, on the counter-irritation

principle.

Most wotes carries the day!' said one of the vixenish ladies at length.

The 'ouse with the yellow door, cabman.'

But after the cabriolet had dashed up, in splendid style, to the house

with the yellow door, 'making,' as one of the vixenish ladies

triumphantly said, 'acterrally more noise than if one had come in

one's own carriage,' and after the driver had dismounted to assist the

ladies in getting out, the small round head of Master Thomas Bardell

The Pickwick Papers