MR. sponge's sporting tour. 203 



CHAPTER XXXII. 



THE MAN OF P-R-O-R-PERTY. 



And now behold Mr. Pufrmgton, fat, fair, and rather more than forty 

 — Pufimgton, no longer the light limber lad who patronised us in 

 Bond-street, but Pufimgton a plump, portly sort of personage, filling 

 his smart clothes uncommonly full. Men no longer hailing him 

 heartily from bay windows, or greeting him cheerily in short but 

 familiar terms, but bowing ceremoniously as they passed with their 

 wives, or perhaps turning down streets or into shops to avoid him. 

 What is the last rose of summer to do under such circumstances ? 

 What, indeed, but retire into the country ? A man may shine there 

 long after he is voted a bore in town, provided none of his old friends 

 are there to proclaim him. Country people are tolerant of twaddle, 

 and slow of finding things out for themselves. Puff now turned his 

 attention to the country, or rather to the advertisements of estates 

 for sale, and immortal George Robbins soon fitted him with one of 

 his earthly paradises ; a mansion replete with every modern elegance, 

 luxury, and convenience, situated in the heart of the most lovely 

 scenery in the world, with eight hundred acres of land of the finest 

 quality, capable of growing forty bushels of wheat after turnips. In 

 addition to the estate there was a lordship or reputed lordship to shoot 

 over, a river to fish in, a pack of fox-hounds to hunt with, and the acl- 

 vertisments gave a sly hint as to the possibility of the property influ- 

 encing the representation of the neighbouring borough of Swilling- 

 ford, if not of returning the member itself. 



This was Hanby House, and though the description undoubtedly 

 partook of George's usual high-flown couleur-de-rose style, the manor 

 being only a manor provided the owner sacrificed his interest in 

 Swillingford by driving off its poachers, and the river being only a 

 river when the tiny Swill was swollen into one, still Hanby House was 

 a very nice attractive sort of place, and seen in the rich foliage of 

 its summer dress, with alll its roses and flowering shrubs in full 

 blow, the description was not so wide of the mark as Robbins's de- 

 scriptions usually were. Puff bought it, and became what he called 

 " a man of p-r-o-r-perty." To be sure, after he got possession he 

 found that it was only an acre here and there that would grow forty 

 bushels of wheat after turnips, and that there was a good deal more 

 to do at the house than he expected, the furniture of the late occu- 

 pants having hidden many defects, added to which they had walked off 

 with almost everything they could wrench down, under the name of 



