Ned cast a sullen look at the officer.

"A pretty comforter you are!" said he. "I have been in a post chaise
with a pleasanter fellow, I'll swear! You may call me an apple if you
will, but, I take it, I am not an apple you'd like to see peeled."

With this pugilistic and menacing pun, the lengthy hero relapsed into
meditative silence.

Our travellers were now entering a road skirted on one side by a common
of some extent, and on the other by a thick hedgerow, which through its
breaks gave occasional glimpses of woodland and fallow, interspersed with
cross-roads and tiny brooklets.

"There goes a jolly fellow!" said Nabbem, pointing to an athletic-looking
man, riding before the carriage, dressed in a farmer's garb, and mounted
on a large and powerful horse of the Irish breed. "I dare say he is well
acquainted with your grazier, Mr. Tomlinson; he looks mortal like one of
the same kidney; and here comes another chap" (as the stranger, was
joined by a short, stout, ruddy man in a carter's frock, riding on a
horse less showy than his comrade's, but of the lengthy, reedy, lank, yet
muscular race, which a knowing jockey would like to bet on). "Now that's
what I calls a comely lad!" continued Nabbem, pointing to the latter
horseman; "none of your thin-faced, dark, strapping fellows like that
Captain Lovett, as the blowens raves about, but a, nice, tight little
body, with a face like a carrot! That's a beauty for my money!
Honesty's stamped on his face, Mr. Tomlinson! I dare says" (and the
officer grinned, for he had been a lad of the cross in his own day),--
"I dare says, poor innocent booby, he knows none of the ways of Lunnun