MR. SPONGE'S SPORTING TOUR. 423 



of the hounds from behind with his heels. Having got it, he threw 

 the fox on the ground, and clearing a circle, he off with his brush 

 in an instant. " Tear him and eat him ! " cried he, as the pack 

 broke in on the carcass. " Tear him and eat him ! " repeated he, as 

 ho made his way up to Miss Glitters with the brush, exclaiming, 

 " We'll put this in your hat, alongside the cock's feathers." 



The fair lady leant towards him, and as he adjusted it becomingly 

 in her hat, looking at her bewitching eyes, her lovely face, and 

 feeling the sweet fragrance of her breath, a something shot through 

 Mr. Sponge's pull-devil, pull-baker coat, his corduroy waistcoat, 

 his Eureka shirt, Angola vest, and penetrated the very cockles of 

 his heart. He gave her such a series of smacking kisses as startled 

 her horse and astonished a poacher who happened to be hid in 

 the adjoining hedge. 



Sponge was never so happy in his life. He could have stood 

 on his head, or been guilty of any sort of extravagance, short of 

 wasting his money. Oh, he was happy ! Oh, he was joyous ! He 

 was intoxicated with pleasure. Ashe eyed his angelic charmer, her 

 lustrous eyes, her glowing cheeks, her pearly teeth, the bewitching 

 fulness of her elegant iournure, and thought of the masterly way 

 she rode the run — above all, of the dashing style in which she 

 charged the mill-race — he felt a something quite different to any- 

 thing he had experienced with any of the buxom widows or lacka- 

 daisical misses whom he could just love or not, according to cir- 

 cumstances, among whom his previous experience had lain. Miss 

 Glitters, he knew, had nothing, and yet he felt he could not do 

 without her ; the puzzlement of his mind was, how the deuce 

 they should manage matters — " make tongue and buckle meet," as 

 he elegantly phrased it. 



It is pleasant to hear a bachelor's pros and cons on the subject 

 of matrimony ; how the difficulties of the gentleman out of love 

 vanish or change into advantages with the one in — " Oh, I would 

 never think of marrying without a couple of thousand a year at the 

 very least!" exclaims young Fastly. "/can't do without four 

 hunters and a hack, I can't do without a valet. I can't do 

 without a brougham. / must belong to half-a-dozen clubs. Fll 

 not marry any woman who can't keep me comfortable — bachelors 

 can live upon nothing — bachelors are welcome everywhere — very 

 different thing with a wife. Frightful things milliners' bills — fifty 

 guineas for a dress, twenty for a bonnet — ladies' maids are the very 

 devil — never satisfied — far worse to please than their mistresses." 

 And between the whiffs of a cigar he hums the old saw, 



" Needles and pins, needles and pins, 

 When a man marries his sorrow begins." 



Now take him on the other tack — Fast is smitten. 



