198 MR. SPONGE S SPOP.TING TOUR. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 



MR. PUFFINGTON ; OR, THE YOUNG MAN ABOUT TOWN. 



Mr. Puffington took the Mangeysterne, now the Hanby hounds, 

 because he thought they would give him consequence. Not that he 

 was particularly deficient in that article ; but being a new man in the 

 county, he thought that taking them would make him popular, and 

 give him standing. He had no natural inclination for hunting, but 

 seeing friends who had no taste for the turf take upon themselves the 

 responsibility of stewardships, he saw no reason why he should not 

 make a similar sacrifice at the shrine of Diana. Indeed, Puff was 

 not bred for a sportsman. His father, a most estimable man, and 

 one with whom we have spent many a convivial evening, was a great 

 starchmaker at Stepney ; and his mother was the daughter of an 

 eminent Worcestershire stone-china maker. Save such ludicrous 

 hunts as they might have seen on their brown jugs, we do not believe 

 either of them had any acquaintance whatever with the chase. Old 

 Puffington was, however, what a wise heir esteems a greal deal more 

 — an excellent man of business, and amassed mountains of money. 

 To see his establishment at Stepney, one would think the whole world 

 was going to be starched. Enormous dock-tailed dray-horses emerged 

 with ponderous waggons heaped up to the very skies, while others 

 would come rumbling in laden with wheat, potatoes, and other starch- 

 making ingredients. Puffington's blue roans were well known about 

 town, and were considered the handsomest horses of the day ; quite 

 equal to Barclay and Perkins's piebalds. 



Old Puffington was not like a sportsman. He was a little, soft, 

 rosy, round-about man, with stiff resolute leg3 that did not look as if 

 they could be bent to a saddle. He was great, however, in a gig, and 

 slouched like a sack. 



Mrs. Puffington, we Smith, was a tall, handsome woman, who 

 thought a good deal of herself. When she and her spouse married, 

 they lived close to the manufactory, in a sweet little villa replete with 

 every elegance and convenience — a pond, which they called a lake ; 

 laburnums without end ; a yew clipped into a , dock-tailed waggon- 

 horse ; standing for three horses and gigs, with an acre and a half of 

 land for a cow. 



Old Puffington, however, being unable to keep those dearest 

 documents of a British merchant, his balance-sheets, to himself, and 

 Mrs. Puffington finding a considerable sum going to the " good " 

 every year, insisted, on the birth of their only child, our friend, upon 

 migrating to the " west," as she called it, and at one bold stroke they 



