This would, at any rate, bring the walk within a practicable distance.

Mr.Crawley was instantly placed upon his guard, like an animal that sees the bait and suspects the trap.

Had he been told that farmer Mangle was going all the way to Barchester, nothing would have induced him to get into the cart.

He would have felt sure that farmer Mangle had been persuaded to pity him in his poverty and his strait, and he would sooner have started to walk to London than have put a foot upon the step of the cart.

But this lift half way did look to him as though it were really fortuitous.