124 MR. sponge's sporting tour. 



" But won't they be expecting you at home, Robert ? " asked 

 Jawleyford, not feeling disposed to be caught in his own trap. 



" Yes, they'll be expecting me at home," replied Foozle. 



" Then, perhaps, you had better not alarm them by staying," sug- 

 gested Jawleyford. 



" No, perhaps I'd better not alarm them by staying," repeated 

 Foozle. Whereupon they all rose, and wishing him a very good 

 night, Jawleyford handed him over to Spigot, who transferred him 

 to one footman, who passed him to another, to button into his leather- 

 headed shandridan. 



After talking Robert over, and expatiating on the misfortune it 

 would be to have such a boy, Jawleyford rang the bell for the ban- 

 quet of water to be taken away ; and ordering breakfast half-an-hour 

 earlier than usual, our friends went to bed. 



CHAPTER XXII. 



THE F. H. H. AGAIN. 



Gentlemen unaccustomed to public hunting often make queer figures 

 of themselves when they go out. We have seen them in all sorts of 

 odd dresses, half fox-hunters half fishermen, half fox-hunters half 

 sailors, with now and then a good sturdy cross of the farmer. 



Mr. Jawleyford was a cross between a military dandy and a 

 squire. The green-and-gold Bumperkin foraging-cap, with the letters 

 " B. Y. C," in front, was cocked jauntily on one side of his badger- 

 pyed head, while he played sportively with the patent leather strap 

 — now toying with it on his lip, now dropping it below his chin, now 

 hitching it up to the peak. He had a tremendously stiff stock on — 

 so hard that no pressure made it wrinkle, and so high that his pointed 

 gills could hardly peer above it. His coat was a bright green cut- 

 away — made when collars were worn very high and very hollow, and 

 when waists were supposed to be about the middle of a man's back, 

 Jawleyford's back-buttons occupying that remarkable position. These, 

 which were of dead gold with a bright rim, represented a hare full 

 stretch for her life, and were the buttons of the old Muggeridge hunt 

 — a hunt that had died many years ago from want of the necessary 

 funds (80Z.) to carry it on. The coat, which was single-breasted and 

 velvet-collared, was extremely swallow-tailed, presenting a remark- 

 able contrast to the barge-built, roomy roundabouts of the members 

 of the Flat Hat Hunt ; the collar rising behiud, in the shape of a 



