We had the whole coach to ourselves in our journey, and a silent journey
it was, till we arrived at a little town about eight miles from my
uncle's residence, to which we could only get through a cross-road. My
uncle insisted on preceding us that night; and though he had written
before we started, to announce our coming, he was fidgety lest the poor
tower should not make the best figure it could, so he went alone, and we
took our ease at our inn.

Betimes the next day we hired a fly-coach--for a chaise could never have
held us and my father's books--and jogged through a labyrinth of
villanous lanes which no Marshal Wade had ever reformed from their
primal chaos. But poor Mrs. Primmins and the canary-bird alone seemed
sensible of the jolts; the former, who sat opposite to us wedged amidst
a medley of packages, all marked "Care, to be kept top uppermost" (why I
know not, for they were but books, and whether they lay top or bottom it
could not materially affect their value),--the former, I say, contrived
to extend her arms over those disjecta membra, and griping a window-sill
with the right hand, and a window-sill with the left, kept her seat
rampant, like the split eagle of the Austrian Empire: in fact, it would
be well nowadays if the split eagle were as firm as Mrs. Primmins! As
for the canary, it never failed to respond, by an astonished chirp, to
every "Gracious me!" and "Lord save us!" which the delve into a rut, or
the bump out of it, sent forth from Mrs. Primmins's lips, with all the
emphatic dolor of the "Ai, ai!" in a Greek chorus.

But my father, with his broad hat over his brows, was in deep thought.
The scenes of his youth were rising before him, and his memory went,
smooth as a spirit's wing, over delve and bump. And my mother, who sat
next him, had her arm on his shoulder, and was watching his face
jealously. Did she think that in that thoughtful face there was regret