in his grief to kick the children and abuse his mother (for
when your finely strung people are out of sorts they must
have everybody else unhappy likewise), he turned his
thoughts to the vulgar expedient of making them more
comfortable if he could.

Bless us, what a number of gentlemen on horseback
there were riding up and down, and how few of them
wanted their horses held! A good city speculator or a
parliamentary commissioner could have told to a fraction,
from the crowds that were cantering about, what sum of
money was realised in London in the course of a year, by
holding horses alone. And undoubtedly it would have been
a very large one, if only a twentieth part of the gentlemen
without grooms had had occasion to alight; but they
hadn't; and it is often an ill-natured circumstance like this,
which spoils the most ingenious estimate in the world.

Kit walked about, now with quick step and now with
slow; now lingering as some rider slackened his horse's
pace and looked about him; and now darting at full speed
up a bye-street as he caught a glimpse of some distant
horseman going lazily up the shady side of the road, and
promising to stop, at every door. But on they all went, one
after another, and there was riot a penny stirring. "I
wonder," thought the boy, "if one of these gentlemen
knew there was nothing in the cupboard at home, whether
he'd stop on purpose, and make believe that he wanted to
call somewhere, that I might earn a trifle?"

He was quite tired out with pacing the streets, to say
nothing of repeated disappointments, and was sitting down
upon a step to rest, when there approached towards him
a little clattering jingling four-wheeled chaise, drawn by a
little obstinate-looking rough-coated pony, and driven by a
little fat placid-faced old gentleman. Beside the little old
gentleman sat a little old lady, plump and placid like himself,
and the pony was coming along at his own pace and doing
exactly as he pleased with the whole concern. If the old
gentleman remonstrated by shaking the reins, the pony
replied by shaking his head. It was plain that the utmost
the pony would consent to do, was to go in his own way up
any street that the old gentleman particularly wished to
traverse, but that it was an understanding between them
that he must do this after his own fashion or not at all.

As they passed where he sat, Kit looked so wistfully at
the little turn-out that the old gentleman looked at him,

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