THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES.

IN FIVE CHAPTERS. CHAPTER THE THIRD.

THE Cumberland Doctor's mention of
Doncaster Races, inspired Mr. Francis Goodchild
with the idea of going down to Doncaster
to see the races. Doncaster being a
good way off, and quite out of the way of
the Idle Apprentices (if anything could be
out of their way, who had no way), it
necessarily followed that Francis perceived
Doncaster in the race-week to be, of all possible
idlenesses, the particular idleness that would
completely satisfy him.

Thomas, with an enforced idleness grafted
on the natural and voluntary power of his
disposition, was not of this mind ; objecting
that a man compelled to lie on his back on a
floor, a sofa, a table, a line of chairs, or
anything he could get to lie upon, was not in
racing condition, and that he desired nothing
better than to lie where he was, enjoying
himself in looking at the flies on the ceiling.
But, Francis Goodchild, who had been walking
round his companion in a circuit of
twelve miles for two days, and had begun to
doubt whether it was reserved for him ever
to be idle in his life, not only overpowered
this objection, but even converted Thomas
Idle to a scheme he formed (another idle
inspiration), of conveying the said Thomas to
the sea-coast, and putting his injured leg
under a stream of salt-water.

Plunging into this happy conception head-
foremost, Mr. Goodchild immediately
referred to the county-map, and ardently
discovered that the most delicious piece of sea-
coast to be found within the limits of England,
Ireland, Scotland, Wales, The Isle of Man,
and the Channel Islands, all summed up
together, was Allonby on the coast of Cumberland.
There was the coast of Scotland
opposite to Allonby, said Mr. Goodchild with
enthusiasm; there was a fine Scottish mountain
on that Scottish coast; there were
Scottish lights to be seen shining across the
glorious Channel, and at Allonby itself there
was every idle luxury (no doubt), that a
watering-place could offer to the heart of idle
man. Moreover, said Mr. Goodchild, with his
finger on the map, this exquisite retreat was
approached by a coach-road, from a railway-
station called Aspatria—a name, in a manner,
suggestive of the departed glories of Greece,
associated with one of the most engaging and
most famous of Greek women. On this
point, Mr. Goodchild continued at intervals
to breathe a vein of classic fancy and
eloquence exceedingly irksome to Mr. Idle, until
it appeared that the honest English
pronunciation of that Cumberland country shortened
Aspatria into " Spatter." After this
supplementary discovery, Mr. Goodchild said no
more about it.

By way of Spatter, the crippled Idle was
carried, hoisted, pushed, poked, and packed,
into and out of carriages, into and out of
beds, into and out of tavern resting-places,
until he was brought at length within sniff
of the sea. And now, behold the apprentices
gallantly riding into Allonby in a one-horse
fly, bent upon staying in that peaceful marine
valley until the turbulent Doncaster time
shall come round upon the wheel, in its turn
among what are in sporting registers called
the " Fixtures " for the month.

"Do you see Allonby ? " asked Thomas
Idle.

"I don't see it yet," said Francis, looking
out of window.

"It must be there," said Thomas Idle.

"I don't see it," returned Francis.

"It must be there," repeated Thomas Idle,
fretfully.

"Lord bless me! " exclaimed Francis,
drawing in his head, " I suppose this
is it!"

"A watering-place," retorted Thomas Idle,
with the pardonable sharpness of an
invalid, " can't be five gentlemen in straw-
hats, on a form on one side of a door, and
four ladies in hats and falls, on a form on
another side of a door, and three geese in a
dirty little brook before them, and a boy's
legs hanging over a bridge (with a boy's
body I suppose on the other side of the
parapet), and a donkey running away. What are
you talking about?"

"Allonby, gentlemen," said the most
comfortable of landladies, as she opened one door
of the carriage; " Allonby, gentlemen," said
the most attentive of landlords, as he opened
the other.

Thomas Idle yielded his arm to the ready
Goodchild, and descended from the vehicle.