COACH PROPRIETORS. 171 



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When disputes arose as to the additional payment, 

 and passengers, giving vent to their feelings, vowed 

 they would never travel by that coach again, Miss 

 Fromont comforted herself with the observation, that 

 ' she didn't care if she could only see them once,' the 

 extra charge making the fare exceed the other 

 coaches ; and as the fares were nominally so very low, 

 a tolerable number of persons were always going by 

 the coaches, wholly unaware of what would happen 

 when they had got half-way on their journey. As 

 the coach had not any established connection of 

 passengers frequently going up and down the road, 

 the threat of not repeating a journey was regarded as 

 perfectly harmless, and not likely, if carried into 

 eflFect, to hurt her at all. 



She horsed the coaches from Twyford to Hunger- 

 ford, a distance of thirty-four miles, for which purpose, 

 had they been fast coaches, she must have kept 

 between seventy and eighty horses ; but at the quiet 

 pace at which they travelled, fewer horses would 

 suflS.ce, and last longer. A coachman described them 

 as being 'as fat as pigs;' and Waude, the coach- 

 builder, in the Old Kent Eoad, said the wheels on 

 her coaches lasted a week or ten days longer than on 

 his other coaches, that went faster. Unfortunately, 

 somehow glanders got into the stable, when a large ^ 

 number of her horses were turned out ; in order to 



