152 MR. SPONGE'S SPORTING TOUR. 



"Dear Mr. Spraggon, — / am sorry to be obliged to put you 

 off ; but since I came in from hunting I have been attacked ivith 

 influenza, which will incapacitate me from the enjoyment of society 

 at least for two or three days. I therefore think the kindest thing 

 I can do is to write to put you off ; and, in the hopes of seeing both 

 you and my lord at no distant day, 



" I remain, dear sir, yours sincerely, 



"Charles James Jawleyford, 

 " To John Spraggon, Esq., " Jawleyford Court. 



&c. &c. &c." 



This he sealed with the great seal of Jawleyford Court — a coat 

 of arms containing innumerable quarterings and heraldic devices. 

 Having then refreshed his memory by looking through a bundle 

 of bills, and selected the most threatening of the lawyers' letters 

 to answer the next day, he proceeded to keep up the delusion of 

 sickness, by retiring to sleep in his dressing-room. 



Our readers will now have the kindness to accompany us to 

 Lord Scamperdale's : time, the morning after the foregoing. 

 " Love me, love my dog," being a favourite saying of his lord- 

 ship's, he fed himself, his friends, and his hounds, on the same 

 meal. Jack and he were busy with two great basins full of por- 

 ridge, which his lordship diluted with milk, while Jack stirred his 

 up with hot dripping, when the put-off note arrived. His lord- 

 ship was still in a complete suit of the great backgammon-board 

 looking red-and-yellow Stunner tartan ; but as Jack was going 

 from home, he had got himself into a pair of his lordships yellow- 

 ochre leathers and new top-boots, while he wore the Stunner jacket 

 and waistcoat to save his lordship's Sunday green cut-away with 

 metal buttons, and canary-coloured waistcoat. His lordship did 

 not eat his porridge with his usual appetite, for he had had a dis- 

 turbed night, Sponge having appeared to him in his dreams in all 

 sorts of forms and predicaments ; now jumping a-top of him — now 

 upsetting Jack — now riding over Frosty-face — now crashing among 

 his hounds ; and he awoke, fully determined to get rid of him by 

 fair means or foul. Buying his horses did not seem so good a 

 speculation as blowing his credit at Jawleyford Court, for, inde- 

 pendently of disliking to part with his cash, his lordship remem- 

 bered that there were other horses to get, and he should only be 

 giving Sponge the means of purchasing them. The more, how- 

 ever, he thought of the Jawleyford project, the more satisfied he 

 was that it would do ; and Jack and he were in a sort of rehearsal, 

 wherein his lordship personated Jawleyford, and was showing Jack 

 (who was only a clumsy diplomatist) how to draw up to the sub- 

 ject of Sponge's pecuniary deficiencies, when the dirty old butler 

 came in with Jawleyford's note. 



