Chapter 46

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 was thrust out of the one-pair window of a
house with a red door, a few numbers off.

'Aggrawatin' thing!' said the vixenish lady last-mentioned,
darting a withering glance at the heavy gentleman.

'My dear, it's not my fault,' said the gentleman.

'Don't talk to me, you creetur, don't,' retorted the lady. 'The
house with the red door, cabmin. Oh! If ever a woman was
troubled with a ruffinly creetur,