I got into the carriage, and bid Branston, who shut the door, good-bye,
and kissed hands to Mrs. Rusk, who was smiling and drying her eyes and
courtesying on the hall-door steps. The dogs, who had started gleefully
with the carriage, were called back by Branston, and driven home, wondering
and wistful, looking back with ears oddly cocked and tails dejected. My
heart thanked them for their kindness, and I felt like a stranger, and very
desolate.
It was a bright, clear morning. It had been settled that it was not
worth the trouble changing from the carriage to the railway for sake of
five-and-twenty miles, and so the entire journey of sixty miles was to be
made by the post road--the pleasantest travelling, if the mind were free.
The grander and more distant features of the landscape we may see well
enough from the window of the railway-carriage; but it is the foreground
that interests and instructs us, like a pleasant gossiping history; and
_that_ we had, in old days, from the post-chaise window. It was more
than travelling picquet. Something of all conditions of life--luxury
and misery--high spirits and low;--all sorts of costume, livery, rags,
millinery; faces buxom, faces wrinkled, faces kind, faces wicked;--no end
of interest and suggestion, passing in a procession silent and vivid, and
all in their proper scenery.
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