Stacey-Lumpton wanted to go in a cab. I said that a 'bus was good enough for me. He looked me up and down as if I were some inferior kind of animal.

"I'll pay for the cab."

That settled it. I told him that I could not think of allowing such a thing. He brushed a speck of dust off the silk facings of his frockcoat. Then, with his pocket-handkerchief, he brushed the top of one of the fingers of his lemon-coloured kid gloves--where it had touched his coat.

"But I've never travelled in an omnibus."

"In that case it'll be a new sensation, and a new sensation's everything! Read the daily paper--it's the salt of life."

"But all sorts of extraordinary people travel in an omnibus!"

"I should rather think they do. Why, the very last time I was on one the Archbishop of Canterbury sat on the seat in front of me, the Duke of Devonshire was on my right, a person high in favour at Marlborough House was just behind, while there was no one below the rank of a baronet in sight."

He looked at me, as he fumbled for his eyeglass, as if he thought I might be getting at him. Before he could make up his mind a "Walham Green" came lumbering towards us. Stopping it, I hustled Stacey-Lumpton into the road before he in the least understood what was happening.

"Now then, look alive! Here's the very 'bus we want! Jump up!"

I assisted him on to the step. He made as if to go inside. I twisted him towards the stairs. He remonstrated.

"My dear fellow, I really must beg of you to allow me to get inside this omnibus."

"Nonsense. You'll be crushed to death, besides being suffocated alive. There's plenty of room outside. Up you toddle."

I don't know about toddling, but urged, no doubt, to an appreciable degree by the pressure which I exercised from behind, he did begin to mount the stairs gingerly one by one. I followed him. When he was near the top I sang out to the conductor.

"All right!" The conductor stamped his foot. The 'bus started. Then, to Stacey-Lumpton, "Hold tight!"

He held tight just in time. He seemed surprised. "Good gracious! I almost tumbled! The omnibus has started! Tell him to stop at once, I'm falling!"

"Not you. The police won't allow them to stop more than a certain time. They're bound to keep on moving. Shove along."

"This is most dangerous. I'm not used to this kind of thing. And the roof seems full."

"There are two empty seats in front there, just behind the driver--move on."

He moved on after a fashion of his own. He seemed to find the task of preserving his equilibrium, and at the same time of steering his way between the two rows of occupied garden seats, a little difficult. He struck one man upon the head. He seized a lady by her bonnet. He all but thrust the point of his umbrella into another person's eye. He grabbed an old gentleman by the collar of his coat. This method of proceeding tended to make him popular.

"Driver!" exclaimed the old gentleman whom Stacey-Lumpton had grabbed, slightly mistaking the situation, "This person is drunk. He ought not to be allowed in such a condition on an omnibus."

Stacey-Lumpton was too confused to remonstrate. He went floundering on. Presently he kicked against a box which a gentleman of the coster class had placed beside himself on the roof. In trying to recover himself he brought his hand down pretty heavily on its owner's hat. Said owner lost no time in calling his attention to the thing which he had done.

"Where do you think you're a-coming to? I shouldn't be surprised but what you thought this 'bus was made for you. You do that again and I'll send you travelling, and don't you seem to forget it neither."

Stacey-Lumpton had reached a vacant seat at last. I sat beside him. Immediately behind us was the coster. He had taken off his hat and was lovingly examining it. It was an ancient billycock, which had been in somebody's family for several generations. A friend accompanied him.

"If I was you, Jimmy," observed his friend, "I should make that cove pay for your 'at."

"Make 'im pay for it? He ain't got no money. Do 'e look as though 'e 'ad?"

"Well, I should make 'im give yer 'is 'at for yourn. He's bashed your 'at in, ain't 'e?"

Jimmy acted on the hint. Leaning forward, he thrust his reminiscence of a head-covering under Stacey-Lumpton's nose.

"I say, I don't know if you know that you've bashed my 'at in, guv'nor?"

Stacey-Lumpton raised his fingers to his nostrils.

"Take it away, sir--horribly smelling thing."

"Wot are you calling a 'orribly smelling thing? Wot would you say if I was to bash your 'at in?"

"I should bash it in if I was you, Jimmy."

"So I will if 'e don't look out, and so I tell 'im."

The gentleman whose coat had been grabbed still seemed unappeased, and still seemed labouring under a misapprehension.

"Persons who are in an intoxicated condition ought not to be allowed on public conveyances." I turned to Stacey-Lumpton.

"I don't know if you are aware that you almost pulled that gentleman's coat off his back?"

The old gentleman's observations, although addressed to no one in particular, had been audible to all. Twisting himself round in his seat, Stacey-Lumpton proceeded to explain.

"I hope, sir, I didn't hurt you."

The coster chose to take this remark as being addressed to him.

"But you 'urt my 'at! I give fourpence for that 'at not three months ago. 'Ow d'yer suppose I'm going to keep myself in 'ats?"

"If I have been so unfortunate as to damage your hat, sir, I shall be happy to present you with the sum of fourpence with which to provide yourself with another."

Jimmy's friend highly approved of this suggestion. He immediately proceeded to embellish it with an addition of his own.

"That's right. You give 'im fourpence and you give me fourpence. That's what I call be'aving like a gentleman."

Stacey-Lumpton failed quite to follow the line of reasoning.

"Why should I give you fourpence?"

"Why? Because I asks for it. I suppose you can 'ear me. You bashes in my friend's 'at, and I'm 'is friend, and we shares and shares alike. As you treats 'im you treats me. Ain't that right, Jimmy?" Jimmy said it was.

"Quite right, 'Enery--it's quite right. If the gentleman is a gentleman 'e'll give us fourpence apiece--both the two of us. 'E looks a gentleman, don't 'e? 'Is 'at wasn't never bought for fourpence--no, nor for three fourpences neither."

A feminine voice was heard in the rear. It was the lady Stacey-Lumpton had seized by the bonnet; she seemed to have been nursing a grievance.

"And what about me? I suppose it doesn't matter anything at all about me. Oh dear no! I have had my bonnet tore almost off my head, and my hair too, but, of course, I am nobody. If a drunken wretch was to handle some wives some husbands would want to know the reason why. But if I was to be thrown right off the omnibust, and trampled under foot, my husband would sit still and never say a word--oh dear no!"

The husband in question appeared to be a stout individual who, seated by the lady's side, leaned his chin on the handle of an umbrella. He seemed to consider that the remark was, at least, partially addressed to him.

"It was only an accident, Eliza."

"Oh, of course, it was only an accident. Whenever anyone insults me it always is an accident. Some husbands wouldn't say it was an accident, but I have to look after myself, I have." She immediately proceeded to do it. Raising her voice she addressed herself to Stacey-Lumpton. "Young man, I don't know if you happen to be aware that you've scrunched my new bonnet out of shape, and drove a hairpin through my head. Is that the way you always get on omnibuses?"

Stacey-Lumpton was all apologies.

"I beg ten thousand pardons, madam, but the fact is I am not accustomed to travelling on an omnibus, and I'm afraid----"

"Fares, please." The conductor came along cutting the apologies short. "Your fare if you please, sir."

"What is the fare?"

"Arf a crown."

This was Jimmy's friend.

"Where are you going?"

This was the conductor. I explained.

"We want a pennyworth." I turned to Stacey-Lumpton. "I have no coppers. Have you got twopence?"

He produced a sovereign purse.

"Have you change for a sovereign?"

This to the conductor, and the conductor was contemptuous.

"Change for a sovereign! I haven't got change for no sovereign, unless you like to take it all in coppers."

"Take change for a sovereign in coppers? What do you suppose I should do with a sovereign's worth of coppers?"

"I don't know nothing at all about it. I've got to do with 'em, haven't I? Twopence, please!"

Jimmy's friend interposed.

"You 'and me over the sovering. I'll change it. I got sevenpence-'apenny,"

Jimmy chorussed.

"And I dessay I could make it up to a bob, and then we'll take our two 'ats out of it, and then we'll give yer wot's left next time we sees yer--eh, 'Enery?"

The driver, turning his head, nodded to his colleague.

"That's all right, Tom. You give the gentlemen their tickets. I'll see you get your twopence. The gentlemen can owe it me." He gave his whip an artistic twirl. "I've known myself what it's like to have a sovereign and no change to be had--ah, and more than a sovereign, though you mightn't think it to see me here."

Not feeling inclined to be indebted to an omnibus driver for the loan of twopence, I suddenly discovered that I had two coppers. The conductor retired. There was an interval of silence--spent, I imagine, by Stacey-Lumpton in endeavouring to smooth his ruffled plumage. Presently Jimmy's friend began again:

"I say, Jimmy, how about our fourpences?"

"That's what I say. Guv'nor, 'ow about our fourpences? I ain't seen no fourpence."

I tendered Stacey-Lumpton a word of advice.

"If you are wise you will give them nothing."

"I don't intend to."

"Oh, you don't, don't you? Well, that's 'andsome! Now, supposing I bash in your 'at?" All at once he made a fresh discovery. "If 'e ain't smashed the blooming box!" He picked up from beside him the box which Stacey-Lumpton had kicked against. "Smashed it right in--straight, 'e 'as! Well, there's a thing to do!" He thrust the box in question between Stacey-Lumpton and myself. "Look 'ere there's bloaters in that box." We did not need his word to make us conscious of that fact. The perfume was enough. Stacey-Lumpton recognised that this was so with, on his face, an expression of speechless horror. "You've busted in the box and spiled the lot of 'em. Who's going to buy bruised bloaters, I'd like to know? I don't mind my 'at so much, but when it comes to bloaters--they're my living."

An interposition from the lady whose bonnet had been "scrunched."

"Parties like him think no more of taking the bread out of the mouths of the struggling poor than if they was insecks!"

Her husband seemed to think the remark slightly uncalled for.

"That's you, Eliza, all over. You must put your spoke in everybody's wheel. You can't keep quiet, can you?"

"It's as well some of us are like that. Some of us would keep quiet till we was dead. I'm not that sort, I thank goodness."

A gentleman on the seat on the other side of the driver, leaning towards me, proffered a suggestion--his accent was distinctly nasal.

"If I vas your vriend I vould gif him a gopper or two to keep him quiet."

At last Stacey-Lumpton found his voice.

"Take that horrible thing away, man."

"'Orrible thing! Wot are you calling a 'orrible thing? Everythink's a 'orrible thing accordink to you. Don't you come trying no toffs over me, my funny bloke, or you'll soon know."

Thereupon something happened which I had not expected, and which, I am pretty sure, Jimmy had not expected either. Stacey-Lumpton took that box of bloaters in his kid-gloved hands, and in another moment it was lying in the road. He had thrown it overboard. What immediately ensued may be described as larks. I had not anticipated anything of that kind when I had suggested that we should ride outside. Jimmy "went for" Stacey-Lumpton with a full-mouthed imprecation.

"He's took my bloaters ... his eyes!!!"

The driver pulled up. "Now then! now then! what's all this? Might I just inquire? Some of you'll get hurt, you know."

Stacey-Lumpton rose from his seat. He turned. He lifted Jimmy off his feet. Jimmy was one of those half-grown coster lads who in London may be regarded as common objects of the sea-shore. His opponent was twice his size and he was an athlete, although he was a "toff." Lowering Jimmy, in spite of his frantic struggles, over the side of the omnibus, he dropped him on to the street. 'Enery, who also evinced symptoms of violence, went by the same route after his friend. Stacey-Lumpton tossed a sovereign after them.

"Provide yourselves with another box of bloaters and a new hat out of that, my men."

But Jimmy was not to be appeased. His honour had been wounded in its most tender place. Tossing his injured billycock into the mud, he began to tear his coat off his back.

"Come down! Meet me like a man!"

The driver played the part of peacemaker.

"Don't be silly, my lad! The gentleman could swallow you! Pick up your sovereign. You'll never see as much money in your life again." He started his horses. "Good-bye, my little dears. If I was you I'd have a bloater each for tea."

When, having arrived at the end of his first 'bus drive, Stacey-Lumpton found himself on solid ground again, he delivered himself of a sententious observation:

"I fancy that some of the passengers on that omnibus were beneath the rank of a baronet."

I agreed with him. I thought it possible that they were.

Not that I think much of a baronet either.

W. Brendon and Son, Printers, Plymouth.