in their party any one of sufficiently high moral courage and
tractable lips, to ensure them from the liability of exposure
to the contempt of the great world, by an immature per-
formance thereon. There was a little time occupied in stow-
ing away the things; for race-course refreshment is always
put in impossible hampers, that will not, by any exercise of
human ingenuity, go anywhere except under the seats, and
not always there. But at last, what with filling the sword-
case, and the folds of the head of the landau, and the pockets,
and in fact every available corner, they got off. The de-
parture, however, caused great excitement. The unquench-
able boys, always so festively inclined, cheered everybody
separately as they entered. The maid, on the door-step op-
posite, paused to look round, as she rested on her hearth-
stone, and quite forgot the baker: fair heads peeped round
the curtains, and peered through the wire blinds: a courteous
young gentleman, in a paper cap and apron, with his shirt-
sleeves tucked up, hoped the company generally would win
their money, and then said to the postilion, looking at the
horse, "Hit him over the head! he's got but one friend, and
he's behind him." And with this recommendation they
departed.
Bent on pleasure themselves, it was human nature to
M'onder how shops were being calmly attended to on the
Derby day. They pitied the shopkeepers ; they pitied the
ordinary passengers; and, above all, they pitied the mild
clerks on the inevitable omnibuses, all bound towards the
Bank, who were doomed to sit in dark offices, upon high
stools, all the goodly day, doing sums, copying letters, and
listening to the chirping of their own pens.
