On arriving in Salisbury Mr Headstone made his way to the coach-office to secure a place to London. Being obliged to wait an hour before the coach's arrival, he walked into the bar of the inn and made himself comfortable, which in his mind naturally required the provision of strong liquor. Although it threatened to reduce his purse (which Mrs Lupin had generously filled with copper and silver), Mr Headstone marked each quarter of the hour with a brandy and water, and when the coach came round at last, with 'London' blazoned in letters of gold upon the hind boot, the pedagogue staggered out into the yard and took his seat upon the box.
The coach was none of your steady-going, yokel coaches, but a swaggering, rakish, dissipated London coach. It rattled noisily through the streets, making everything get out of its way; and spun along the open country-road, racing past hedges, gates, and trees; past cottages and barns; past streams, in which the cattle cooled their feet; past paddock-fences, farms and rick-yards; past churches, with rustic burial-grounds about them.
Mr Headstone, under the influence of the brandy and hot sun, felt inclined to doze, but found the coachman's shoulder an inconvenient pillow on which to rest his head, on account of the fact that that portion of that gentleman's anatomy was connected to the arm which was connected to the hand that flourished the whip over the heads of the four greys. The coach, being obliged to follow the road through all its dips and hollows and twists and turns, gave a very good imitation of a ship being tossed about on the high seas, and Mr Headstone, being no very good sailor, felt the worse for the comparison.
In time the country roads were left behind and the way ahead became a continuous street; and so on they rode, past market-gardens, rows of houses, villas, crescents, terraces, and squares; past brick and mortar in its every shape; and in among the rattling pavements, where a jaunty-seat upon a coach is not so easy to preserve. Down countless turnings, and through countless mazy ways, until the four panting greys drew up inside the yard of The Saracen's Head in Snow Hill in the great city of London, and there relinquished the charge of their passengers in exchange for a liberal quantity of fresh hay and a nosebag of barley.
Mr Charles Dickens
