then make love to Fanny? Why, yes; about as much love as one
_could_ make whilst the mail was changing horses--a process which,
ten years later, did not occupy above eighty seconds; but _then_,--
viz., about Waterloo--it occupied five times eighty. Now, four hundred
seconds offer a field quite ample enough for whispering into a young
woman's ear a great deal of truth, and (by way of parenthesis) some
trifle of falsehood. Grandpapa did right, therefore, to watch me. And
yet, as happens too often to the grandpapas of earth in a contest with
the admirers of granddaughters, how vainly would he have watched me had
I meditated any evil whispers to Fanny! She, it is my belief, would
have protected herself against any man's evil suggestions. But he, as
the result showed, could not have intercepted the opportunities for
such suggestions. Yet, why not? Was he not active? Was he not blooming?
Blooming he was as Fanny herself.

"Say, all our praises why should lords----"

Stop, that's not the line.

"Say, all our roses why should girls engross?"

The coachman showed rosy blossoms on his face deeper even than his
granddaughter's--_his_ being drawn from the ale-cask, Fanny's from
the fountains of the dawn. But, in spite of his blooming face, some
infirmities he had; and one particularly in which he too much resembled
a crocodile. This lay in a monstrous inaptitude for turning round. The
crocodile, I presume, owes that inaptitude to the absurd _length_
of his back; but in our grandpapa it arose rather from the absurd
_breadth_ of his back, combined, possibly, with some growing
stiffness in his legs. Now, upon this crocodile infirmity of his I