30 LINES IN PLEASANT PLACES 



of out-of-door pursuits and country life. They were 

 both devoted to all-round angling, and Manford, in a 

 modest degree, fancied himself with the gun. These 

 young men are here introduced to the reader because 

 a passing sketch of one of their sporting excursions to 

 the country will indicate a type, and show that they 

 might be cockney, but were also not undeserving the 

 name of sportsmen. 



The young fellows made their plans in the billiard- 

 room of the Bottle's Head, just out of Eastcheap, 

 chatting leisurely on the cushions while waiting for a 

 couple of bank mashers to finish their apparently never- 

 ending game. Thirty or forty years ago young fellows 

 in the City did not think so much about holidays as 

 they now do. We have reached a stage of civilisation 

 when it seems absolutely necessary for our bodily and 

 spiritual welfare, however comfortably we may be 

 situated in life, to rush away for a change as regularly 

 as the months of August and September come round. 

 Manford declared that exhausted nature would hold out 

 no longer unless he could take a holiday. Serton sug- 

 gested that he should try and rub along somehow until 

 nearer October, when he might go down with him to 

 a quiet little place, where he gushingly assured him there 

 was splendid fishing, where they might live for next 

 to nothing, meet with nice people, and be in the midst 

 of one of the most beautiful parts of the country. The 

 one condition was that probably they would have to 

 rough it a little. All these were genuine attractions to 

 S., who agreed to go, M. adding, as they rose to secure 

 the cues, that besides fishing there would be chances 

 with the rabbits. 



A spring-cart and a horsey-looking person were await- 

 ing the travellers outside the small roadside railway 

 station at the end of their Journey, and they were already 



