Free Selected Stories (9781440673832) by Mark (EDT) E.; Mitchell Forster Page B

cobwebs and moss into tissues of fairyland. The driver was huddled up in a cape. He faced the blank wall, and how he had managed to drive in so neatly and so silently was one of the many things that the boy never discovered. Nor could he imagine how ever he would drive out.
    â€˜Please,’ his voice quavered through the foul brown air. ‘Please, is that an omnibus?’
    â€˜Omnibus est,’ said the driver, without turning round. There was a moment’s silence. The policeman passed, coughing, by the entrance of the alley. The boy crouched in the shadow, for he did not want to be found out. He was pretty sure, too, that it was a Pirate; nothing else, he reasoned, would go from such odd places and at such odd hours.
    â€˜About when do you start?’ He tried to sound nonchalant.
    â€˜At sunrise.’
    â€˜How far do you go?’
    â€˜The whole way.’
    â€˜And can I have a return ticket which will bring me all the way back?’
    â€˜You can.’
    â€˜Do you know, I half think I’ll come.’ The driver made no answer. The sun must have risen, for he unhitched the brake. And scarcely had the boy jumped in before the omnibus was off.
    How? Did it turn? There was no room. Did it go forward? There was a blank wall. Yet it was moving—moving at a stately pace through the fog, which had turned from brown to yellow. The thought of warm bed and warmer breakfast made the boy feel faint. He wished he had not come. His parents would not have approved. He would have gone back to them if the weather had not made it impossible. The solitude was terrible; he was the only passenger. And the omnibus, though well-built, was cold and somewhat musty. He drew his coat round him, and in so doing chanced to feel his pocket. It was empty. He had forgotten his purse.
    â€˜Stop!’ he shouted. ‘Stop!’ And then, being of a polite disposition, he glanced up at the painted notice-board so that he might call the driver by name. ‘Mr Browne! stop; oh, do please stop!’
    Mr Browne did not stop, but he opened a little window and looked in at the boy. His face was a surprise, so kind it was and modest.
    â€˜Mr Browne, I’ve left my purse behind. I’ve not got a penny. I can’t pay for the ticket. Will you take my watch, please? I am in the most awful hole.’
    â€˜Tickets on this line,’ said the driver, ‘whether single or return, can be purchased by coinage from no terrene mint. And a chronometer, though it had solaced the vigils of Charlemagne or measured the slumbers of Laura, can acquire by no mutation the doublecake that charms the fangless Cerberus of Heaven!’ So saying, he handed in the necessary ticket, and, while the boy said ‘Thank you,’ continued: ‘Titular pretensions, I know it well, are vanity. Yet they merit no censure when uttered on a laughing lip, and in an homonymous world are in some sort useful, since they do serve to distinguish one Jack from his fellow. Remember me, therefore, as Sir Thomas Browne. 2
    â€˜Are you a Sir? Oh, sorry!’ He had heard of these gentlemen drivers. ‘It is good of you about the ticket. But if you go on at this rate, however does your bus pay?’
    â€˜It does not pay. It was not intended to pay. Many are the faults of my equipage; it is compounded too curiously of foreign woods; its cushions tickle erudition rather than promote repose; and my horses are nourished not on the evergreen pastures of the moment, but on the dried bents and clovers of Latinity. But that it pays!—that error at all events was never intended and never attained.’
    â€˜Sorry again,’ said the boy rather hopelessly. Sir Thomas looked sad, fearing that, even for a moment, he had been the cause of sadness. He invited the boy to come up and sit beside him on the box, and together they journeyed on through the fog, which was now changing from yellow to white. There were no houses by the road; so it