1 84 BEGGARS ON HORSEBACK. 



with dignity the farewell endearments of their 

 aunts, staring through their loopholes with com- 

 plete stolidity, after the manner of horse-flesh. 

 Their liquid brown eyes expressed nothing be- 

 yond a desire for more penny buns ; and when 

 Miss O'Flannigan attempted, with a good deal 

 of personal effort, to imprint a final salute upon 

 her Tom's ruddy brown muzzle, he snorted with 

 apprehension and withdrew to the extremest 

 limits of his cable. It was impossible to explain 

 to them that we found some difficulty in parting 

 with them, friends but of a fortnight though they 

 were. 



And in parting, too, from the other features of 

 that fortnight, — from the leisure and indepen- 

 dence, the fatigue and inconvenience, the life ex- 

 panding unintellectually in long solitudes of open 

 sky, after shrivelling for three months in the 

 merely brain activity of London. Travelling 

 towards Chester in the familiar monotony of a 

 railway carriage, the eye noted discontentedly the 



