CHAPTER 8 MY HOLIDAYS. ESPECIALLY ONE HAPPY AFTERNOON

　　I well remember though, how the distant idea of the holidays, after seeming  for an immense time to be a stationary speck, began to come towards us, and to  grow and grow.  How from counting months, we came to weeks, and then to days; and how I then began to be afraid that I  should not be sent for and when I  learnt from Steerforth that  I had  been sent  for, and  was certainly  to go  home, had dim forebodings that I might  break my leg first.   How the breaking-up day  changed its place fast, at last, from the  week after next to next week, this  week, the day after tomorrow, tomorrow,  today, tonight - when  I was inside the  Yarmouth mail, and going home.

　　I had many a broken sleep inside the Yarmouth mail, and many an incoherent dream of all  these things.   But when  I awoke  at intervals,  the ground outside the window was not the playground of Salem  House, and the sound in my ears  was not the sound of Mr.  Creakle giving it to  Traddles, but the sound  of the coachman touching up the horses.

　　CHAPTER 8 MY HOLIDAYS.  ESPECIALLY ONE HAPPY AFTERNOON

　　When we arrived before day at the inn where the mail stopped, which was not  the inn where my friend the waiter lived,  I was shown up to a nice  little bedroom, with DOLPHIN painted on the door.  Very cold I was, I know, notwithstanding  the hot tea they had given me before a large fire downstairs; and very glad I was to turn into the Dolphin's bed, pull  the Dolphin's blankets round my head,  and go to sleep.

　　Mr. Barkis the carrier was to call for me in the morning at nine o'clock.  I got up at eight, a little giddy from the shortness of my night's rest, and was ready for him before the appointed time. He received me exactly as if not five minutes had elapsed since we were last together,  and I had only been into the  hotel to get change for sixpence, or something of that sort.

　　As soon as I and my box were in the cart, and the carrier seated, the lazy horse walked away with us all at his accustomed pace.

　　'You look very well, Mr. Barkis,' I said, thinking he would like to know it.

　　Mr. Barkis rubbed his cheek with his cuff, and then looked at his cuff as if  he expected to find some of the bloom upon it; but made no other acknowledgement of the compliment.