What a very odd thing to have a hansom cab!'
'I should like one.'
'Should you indeed?'
'Particularly if I could drive it myself. Silverbridge does, at
night, when he thinks people won't see him.'
'Drive the cab in the streets! What does he do with his man?'
'Puts him inside. He was out once without the man and took up a
fare,--an old woman, he said. And when she was going to pay him he
touched his hat and said he never took money from ladies.'
'Do you believe that?'
'Oh yes. I call that good fun, because it did no harm. He had his
lark. The lady was taken where she wanted to go, and she saved her
money.'
'Suppose he had upset her,' said Lord Popplecourt, looking as an
old philosopher might have looked when he had found something
clenching answer to another philosopher's argument.
'The real cabman might have upset her worse,' said Lady Mary.
'Don't you feel it odd that we should meet here?' said Lord
Silverbridge to his neighbour Lady Mabel.
'Anything unexpected is odd,' said Lady Mabel. It seemed to her to
be very odd,--unless certain people had made up their minds as to
the expediency of a certain event.
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