1705039641
The cabman nodded.
1705039642
1705039643
“This old fellow,” he said, “never carried a deal of flesh. His grub don’t put spirit into him nowadays; it’s not up to much in quality, but he gets enough of it.”
1705039644
1705039645
“And you don’t.”
1705039646
1705039647
The cabman again took up his whip.
1705039648
1705039649
“I don’t suppose,” he said without emotion, “any one could ever find another job for me now. I’ve been at this too long. It’ll be the workhouse, if it’s not the other thing.”
1705039650
1705039651
And hearing us mutter that it seemed cruel, he smiled for the third time.
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1705039653
“Yes,” he said slowly, “it’s a bit ‘ard on us, because we’ve done nothing to deserve it. But things are like that, so far as I can see. One thing comes pushin’ out another, and so you go on. I’ve thought about it—you get to thinkin’ and worryin’ about the rights o’ things, sittin’ up here all day. No, I don’t see anything for it. It’ll soon be the end of us now—can’t last much longer. And I don’t know that I’ll be sorry to have done with it. It’s pretty well broke my spirit.”
1705039654
1705039655
“There was a fund got up.”
1705039656
1705039657
“Yes, it helped a few of us to learn the motor drivin’; but what’s the good of that to me, at my time of life? Sixty, that’s my age; I’m not the only one—there’s hundreds like me. We’re not fit for it, that’s the fact; we haven’t got the nerve now. It’d want a mint of money to help us . And what you say’s the truth—people want to see the end of us. They want the taxis—our day’s over. I’m not complaining; you asked me about it yourself.”
1705039658
1705039659
And for the third time he raised his whip.
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1705039661
“Tell me what you would have done if you had been given your fare and just sixpence over?”
1705039662
1705039663
The cabman stared downward, as though puzzled by that question.
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1705039665
“Done? Why, nothing. What could I have done?”
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1705039667
“But you said that it had saved your life.”
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1705039669
“Yes, I said that,” he answered slowly; “I was feelin’ a bit low. You can’t help it sometimes; it’s the thing comin’ on you, and no way out of it—that’s what gets over you. We try not to think about it, as a rule.”
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1705039671
And this time, with a “Thank you, kindly!” he touched his horse’s flank with the whip. Like a thing aroused from sleep the forgotten creature started and began to draw the cabman away from us. Very slowly they traveled down the road among the shadows of the trees broken by lamplight. Above us, white ships of cloud were sailing rapidly across the dark river of sky on the wind which smelled of change. And, after the cab was lost to sight, that wind still brought to us the dying sound of the slow wheels.
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Notes
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1705039675
taxicab, a motor cab or car, fitted with a taximeter that registers the distance covered by the car and at the same time registers the fare.
1705039676
1705039677
Leicester Square and Piccadilly, the names, respectively, of a well-known street crossing and of a street in London.
1705039678
1705039679
hansoms, a kind of horse carriage named after its English inventor J. A. Hansom. A hansom has two wheels, while four-wheelers have four wheels.
1705039680
1705039681
curb, the edging of upright stones set along the margin of the street to separate the sidewalk from the roadbed.
1705039682
1705039683
sou’westerly, southwesterly. The wind blew from the southwest.
1705039684
1705039685
half-crown, an English coin worth two and a half shillings.
1705039686
1705039687
furrows, deep lines on the face.
1705039688
1705039689
coherent, attached or stuck together; sticking to the bones.
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