of foxes’ brushes, and in the frame of the looking-glass, above the white marble mantelpiece, were stuck visiting-cards, notes of invitation, thanks for “obliging inquiries,” etc.  The hearth-rug exhibited a bright yellow tiger, with pink eyes, on a blue ground, with a flossy green border; and the fender and fire-irons were of shining brass.  On the wall, immediately opposite the fire-place, was a portrait of Mrs. Jorrocks before she was married, so unlike her present self that no one would have taken it for her.  The back drawing-room, which looked out upon the gravel walk and house-backs beyond, was papered with broad scarlet and green stripes in honour of the Surrey Hunt uniform, and was set out with a green-covered library table in the centre, with a red morocco hunting-chair between it and the window, and several good strong hair-bottomed mahogany chairs around the walls.  The table had a very literary air, being strewed with sporting magazines, odd numbers of Bell’s Life, pamphlets, and papers of various descriptions, while on a sheet of foolscap on the portfolio were ten lines of an elegy on a giblet pie which had been broken in coming from the baker’s, at which Mr. Jorrocks had been hammering for some time.  On the side opposite the fire-place, on a hanging range of mahogany shelves, were ten volumes of Bell’s Life in London, the New Sporting Magazine, bound gilt and lettered, the Memoirs of Harriette Wilson, Boxiana, Taplin’s Farriery, Nimrod’s Life of Mytton, and a backgammon board that Mr. Jorrocks had bought by mistake for a history of England.

Mrs. Jorrocks, as we said before, was sitting in state at the far side of the round table, on a worsted-worked ottoman exhibiting a cock pheasant on a white ground, and was fanning herself with a red-and-white paper fan, and turning over the leaves of an annual.  How Mr. Jorrocks happened to marry her, no one could ever divine, for she never was pretty, had very little money, and not even a decent figure to recommend her.  It was generally supposed at the time, that his brother Joe and he having had a deadly feud about a bottom piece of muffin, the lady’s friends had talked him into the match, in the hopes of his having a family to leave his money to, instead of bequeathing it to Joe or his children.  Certain it is, they never were meant for each other; Mr. Jorrocks, as our readers have seen, being all nature and impulse, while Mrs. Jorrocks was all vanity and affectation.  To describe her accurately is more than we can pretend to, for she looked so different in different dresses, that Mr. Jorrocks himself sometimes did not recognise her.  Her face was round, with a good strong brick-dust sort of complexion, a turn-up nose, eyes that were grey in one light and green in another, and a middling-sized mouth, with a double chin below.  Mr. Jorrocks used to say that she was “warranted” to him as twelve years younger than himself, but many people supposed the difference of age between them