第46章

Then came the making up of parties for the journey home, and Tom joined a party who were to hire a coach, and post with four horses to Oxford.

Then the last Saturday, on which the Doctor came round to each form to give out the prizes, and hear the master's last reports of how they and their charges had been conducting themselves; and Tom, to his huge delight, was praised, and got his remove into the lower fourth, in which all his School-house friends were.

On the next Tuesday morning at four o'clock hot coffee was going on in the housekeeper's and matron's rooms; boys wrapped in great-coats and mufflers were swallowing hasty mouthfuls, rushing about, tumbling over luggage, and asking questions all at once of the matron; outside the School-gates were drawn up several chaises and the four-horse coach which Tom's party had chartered, the postboys in their best jackets and breeches, and a cornopean player, hired for the occasion, blowing away "A southerly wind and a cloudy sky," waking all peaceful inhabitants half-way down the High Street.

Every minute the bustle and hubbub increased: porters staggered about with boxes and bags, the cornopean played louder. Old Thomas sat in his den with a great yellow bag by his side, out of which he was paying journey-money to each boy, comparing by the light of a solitary dip the dirty, crabbed little list in his own handwriting with the Doctor's list and the amount of his cash; his head was on one side, his mouth screwed up, and his spectacles dim from early toil. He had prudently locked the door, and carried on his operations solely through the window, or he would have been driven wild and lost all his money.

"Thomas, do be quick; we shall never catch the Highflyer at Dunchurch."

"That's your money all right, Green."

"Hullo, Thomas, the Doctor said I was to have two pound ten; you've only given me two pound." (I fear that Master Green is not confining himself strictly to truth.) Thomas turns his head more on one side than ever, and spells away at the dirty list.

Green is forced away from the window.

"Here, Thomas--never mind him; mine's thirty shillings." "And mine too," "And mine," shouted others.

One way or another, the party to which Tom belonged all got packed and paid, and sallied out to the gates, the cornopean playing frantically "Drops of Brandy," in allusion, probably, to the slight potations in which the musician and postboys had been already indulging. All luggage was carefully stowed away inside the coach and in the front and hind boots, so that not a hat-box was visible outside. Five or six small boys, with pea-shooters, and the cornopean player, got up behind; in front the big boys, mostly smoking, not for pleasure, but because they are now gentlemen at large, and this is the most correct public method of notifying the fact.

"Robinson's coach will be down the road in a minute; it has gone up to Bird's to pick up. We'll wait till they're close, and make a race of it," says the leader. "Now, boys, half a sovereign apiece if you beat 'em into Dunchurch by one hundred yards."

"All right, sir," shouted the grinning postboys.

Down comes Robinson's coach in a minute or two, with a rival cornopean, and away go the two vehicles, horses galloping, boys cheering, horns playing loud. There is a special providence over school-boys as well as sailors, or they must have upset twenty times in the first five miles--sometimes actually abreast of one another, and the boys on the roofs exchanging volleys of peas; now nearly running over a post-chaise which had started before them; now half-way up a bank; now with a wheel and a half over a yawning ditch: and all this in a dark morning, with nothing but their own lamps to guide them. However, it's all over at last, and they have run over nothing but an old pig in Southam Street. The last peas are distributed in the Corn Market at Oxford, where they arrive between eleven and twelve, and sit down to a sumptuous breakfast at the Angel, which they are made to pay for accordingly. Here the party breaks up, all going now different ways; and Tom orders out a chaise and pair as grand as a lord, though he has scarcely five shillings left in his pocket, and more than twenty miles to get home.

"Where to, sir?"

"Red Lion, Farringdon," says Tom, giving hostler a shilling.

"All right, sir.--Red Lion, Jem," to the postboy; and Tom rattles away towards home. At Farringdon, being known to the innkeeper, he gets that worthy to pay for the Oxford horses, and forward him in another chaise at once; and so the gorgeous young gentleman arrives at the paternal mansion, and Squire Brown looks rather blue at having to pay two pound ten shillings for the posting expenses from Oxford. But the boy's intense joy at getting home, and the wonderful health he is in, and the good character he brings, and the brave stories he tells of Rugby, its doings and delights, soon mollify the Squire, and three happier people didn't sit down to dinner that day in England (it is the boy's first dinner at six o'clock at home--great promotion already) than the Squire and his wife and Tom Brown, at the end of his first half-year at Rugby.