Chapter 10

CHAPTER X
CLEARING UP ALL DOUBTS (IF ANY EXISTED) OF THE
DISINTERESTEDNESS OF Mr. A. JINGLE'S CHARACTER

There are in London several old inns, once the headquarters
of celebrated coaches in the days when coaches performed
their journeys in a graver and more solemn manner than
they do in these times; but which have now degenerated into little
more than the abiding and booking-places of country wagons. The
reader would look in vain for any of these ancient hostelries,
among the Golden Crosses and Bull and Mouths, which rear
their stately fronts in the improved streets of London. If he
would light upon any of these old places, he must direct his steps
to the obscurer quarters of the town, and there in some secluded
nooks he will find several, still standing with a kind of gloomy
sturdiness, amidst the modern innovations which surround them.

In the Borough especially, there still remain some half-dozen
old inns, which have preserved their external features unchanged,
and which have escaped alike the rage for public improvement and
the encroachments of private speculation. Great, rambling queer
old places they are, with galleries, and passages, and staircases,
wide enough and antiquated enough to furnish materials for a hundred
ghost stories, supposing we should ever be reduced to the lamentable
necessity of inventing any, and that the world should exist long
enough to exhaust the innumerable veracious legends connected with
old London Bridge, and its adjacent neighbourhood on the Surrey side.

It was in the yard of one of these inns--of no less celebrated a
one than the White Hart--that a man was busily employed in
brushing the dirt off a pair of boots, early on the morning
succeeding the events narrated in the last chapter. He was
habited in a coarse, striped waistcoat, with black calico sleeves,
and blue glass buttons; drab breeches and leggings. A bright red
handkerchief was wound in a very loose and unstudied style
round his neck, and an old white hat was carelessly thrown on
one side of his head. There were two rows of boots before him,
one cleaned and the other dirty, and at every addition he made
to the clean row, he paused from his work, and contemplated its
results with evident satisfaction.

The yard presented none of that bustle and activity which are
the usual characteristics of a large coach inn. Three or four
lumbering wagons, each with a pile of goods beneath its ample
canopy, about the height of the second-floor window of an
ordinary house, were stowed away beneath a lofty roof which
extended over one end of the yard; and another, which was
probably to commence its journey that morning, was drawn out
into the open space. A double tier of bedroom galleries,