Sink or Swim? , Volume I by Matilda Charlotte Houstoun

"Well, mother, ain't this better now than to be sitting mending / stockings, and to be bothering about pickles and preserves at home? " / asked genial John Beacham of his highly respectable parent as mother and / son, sitting in the front-seat of the most well-appointed of "traps," / were jogging quietly along the pleasant lanes towards Danescourt.

It was somewhat against the grain, and not a little to his own / inconvenience, that John Beacham was devoting a day to amuse his / womankind on that eventful twenty-fourth of July. Danescourt was a good / five-and-twenty miles from the Paddocks. In little more than / half-an-hour the travellers could be conveyed by rail from Switcham to / Gawthorpe; the latter place being the nearest town and station -- distant / about three miles -- from Danescourt. But Mrs. Beacham unfortunately / entertained, amongst other immutable prejudices, a very decided one / against steam locomotion. As a rule she was not greatly troubled with / "nerves; " but the exception was when, by some extraordinary / concatenation of circumstances, she found herself whirled along in an / express-train, gasping for breath, and ejaculating piteous appeals for / protection to that Power which, under the ordinary circumstances of / everyday life, we are all of us so given both to ignore and to forget.