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Page 5:-
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These two had sent their personal baggage on by train: only
retaining each a knapsack. Idle now applied himself to
constantly regretting the train, to tracking it through the
intricacies of Bradshaw's Guide, and finding out where it is
now - and where now - and where now - and to asking what was
the use of walking, when you could ride at such a pace as
that. Was it to see the country? If that was the object,
then look at it out of the carriage windows. There was a
great deal more of it to be seen there than here. Besides,
who wanted to see the country? Nobody. And again, whoever
did walk? Nobody. Fellows set off to walk, but they never
did it. They came back and said they did, but they didn't.
Then why should he walk? He wouldn't walk. He swore it by
this milestone!
It was the fifth from London, so far had they penetrated
into the North. Submitting to the powerful chain of
argument, Goodchild proposed a return to the Metropolis, and
a falling back on Euston Square Terminus. Thomas assented
with alacrity, and so they walked down into the North by the
next morning's express, and carried their knapsacks in the
luggage-van.
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It was like all other expresses, as every express is and
must be. It bore through the harvest country a smell like a
large washing-day, and a sharp issue of steam as from a huge
brazen tea-urn. The greatest power in nature and art
combined, it yet glided over dangerous heights in the sight
of people looking up from fields and roads, as smoothly and
unreally as a light miniature plaything. Now the engine
shrieked in hysterics of such intensity, that it seemed
desirable that the men who had
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