CHAPTER XLV.
Jerry's New Year.
Christmas and the New Year are very merry times for some people; but for cabmen and cabmen's horses, it is no holiday, though it may be a harvest. There are so many parties, balls, and places of amusement open, that the work is hard and often late. Sometimes driver and horse have to wait for hours in the rain or frost, shivering with cold, whilst the merry people within are dancing away to the music. I wonder if the beautiful ladies ever think of the weary cabman waiting on his box, and his patient beast standing, till his legs get stiff with cold.
I had now most of the evening work, as I was well accustomed to standing, and Jerry was also more afraid of Hotspur taking cold. We had a great deal of late work in the Christmas week, and Jerry's cough was bad; but however late we were, Polly sat up for him, and came out with the lantern to meet him, looking anxious and troubled. On the evening of the New Year, we had to take two gentlemen to a house in one of the West End Squares; we set them down at nine o'clock and were told to come again at eleven, "But," said one of them, "as it is a
