330 



MR. SPONGE'S SPORTING TOUR. 



CHAPTER LIII. 



PUDDINGPQTE BOWER. 



We must now back the train a little, and have a look at Jog 

 and Co. 



Mr. and Mrs. Jog had had another squabble after Mr. Sponge's 

 departure in the morning, Mr. Jog reproving Mrs. Jog for the in- 

 terest she seemed to take in Mr. Sponge, as shown by her going to 

 the door to see him amble away on the piebald hack. Mrs. Jog 

 justified herself on the score of Gustavus James, with whom she was 

 quite sure Mr. Sponge was much struck, and to whom, she made no 

 doubt, he would leave his ample fortune. Jog, on the other hand, 

 wheezed and puffed into his frill, and reasserted that Mr. Sponge 

 was as likely to live as Gustavus James, and to marry, and to have a 

 bushel of children of his own; while Mrs. Jog rejoined that he was 

 " sure to break his neck " — breaking their necks being, as she con- 

 ceived, the inevitable end of fox-hunters. Jog, who had not prose- 

 cuted the sport of hunting long enough to be able to gainsay her 

 assertion, though he took especial care to defer the operation of 

 breaking his own neck as long as he could, fell back upon the expense 

 and inconvenience of keeping Mr. Sponge and his three horses, and his 

 saucy servant, who had taught their domestics to turn up their noses 

 at his diet table; above all, at his stick-jaw and undeniable small-beer. 

 So they went fighting and squabbling on, till at last the scene ended as 

 usual, by Mrs. Jogglebury bursting into tears, and declaring that 

 Jog didn't care a farthing either for her or her children. Jog then 

 bundled off, to try and fashion a most incorrigible-looking, knotty 

 blackthorn into a head of Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst. He after- 

 wards took a turn at a hazel that he thought would make a Joe 

 Hume. Having occupied himself with these till the children's 

 dinner-hour, he took a wandering, snatching sort of meal, and then 

 put on his paletot, with a little hatchet in the pocket, and went 

 off in search of the raw material in his own and the neighbouring 

 hedges. 



Evening came, and with it came Jog, laden, as usual, with an arm- 

 ful of gibbies, but the shades of night followed evening ere there was 

 any tidings of the sporting inmates of the house. At length just as 

 Jog was taking his last stroll prior to going in for good, he espied a 

 pair of vacillating white breeches coming up the avenue with a 

 clearly drunken man inside them. Jog stood straining his eyes 

 watching their movements, wondering whether they would keep the 



