He didn't
seem to wait so long for a sixpence in the wind, as at other times;
the having to fight with that boisterous element took off his
attention, and quite freshened him up, when he was getting hungry
and low-spirited. A hard frost too, or a fall of snow, was an
Event; and it seemed to do him good, somehow or other--it would
have been hard to say in what respect though, Toby! So wind and
frost and snow, and perhaps a good stiff storm of hail, were Toby
Veck's red-letter days.
Wet weather was the worst; the cold, damp, clammy wet, that wrapped
him up like a moist great-coat--the only kind of great-coat Toby
owned, or could have added to his comfort by dispensing with. Wet
days, when the rain came slowly, thickly, obstinately down; when
the street's throat, like his own, was choked with mist; when
smoking umbrellas passed and re-passed, spinning round and round
like so many teetotums, as they knocked against each other on the
crowded footway, throwing off a little whirlpool of uncomfortable
sprinklings; when gutters brawled and waterspouts were full and
noisy; when the wet from the projecting stones and ledges of the
church fell drip, drip, drip, on Toby, making the wisp of straw on
which he stood mere mud in no time; those were the days that tried
him. Then, indeed, you might see Toby looking anxiously out from
his shelter in an angle of the church wall--such a meagre shelter
that in summer time it never cast a shadow thicker than a good-
sized walking stick upon the sunny pavement--with a disconsolate
and lengthened face. But coming out, a minute afterwards, to warm
himself by exercise, and trotting up and down some dozen times, he
would brighten even then, and go back more brightly to his niche.
They called him Trotty from his pace, which meant speed if it
didn't make it. He could have walked faster perhaps; most likely;
but rob him of his trot, and Toby would have taken to his bed and
died. It bespattered him with mud in dirty weather; it cost him a
world of trouble; he could have walked with infinitely greater
ease; but that was one reason for his clinging to it so
tenaciously. A weak, small, spare old man, he was a very Hercules,
this Toby, in his good intentions. He loved to earn his money. He
delighted to believe--Toby was very poor, and couldn't well afford
to part with a delight--that he was worth his salt. With a
shilling or an eighteenpenny message or small parcel in hand, his
courage always high, rose higher. As he trotted on, he would call
out to fast Postmen ahead of him, to get out of the way; devoutly
believing that in the natural course of things he must inevitably
overtake and run them down; and he had perfect faith--not often
tested--in his being able to carry anything that man could lift.
Thus, even when he came out of his nook to warm himself on a wet
day, Toby trotted. Making, with his leaky shoes, a crooked line of
slushy footprints in the mire; and blowing on his chilly hands and
rubbing them against each other, poorly defended from the searching
cold by threadbare mufflers of grey worsted, with a private
apartment only for the thumb, and a common room or tap for the rest
of the fingers; Toby, with his knees bent and his cane beneath his
arm, still trotted. Falling out into the road to look up at the
belfry when the Chimes resounded, Toby trotted still.
