This flattered Jorrocks, and sidling up, he slipped a shilling into his hand, saying, “Well—­bring them out, and let’s see how they look this morning.”  The stall reins are slipped, and out they step with their hoods on their quarters.  One was a large, fat, full-sized chestnut, with a white ratch down the full extent of his face, a long square tail, bushy mane, with untrimmed heels.  The other was a brown, about fifteen two, coarse-headed, with a rat-tail, and collar-marked.  The tackle was the same as they came down with.  “You’ll do the trick on that, I reckon,” said Jorrocks, throwing his leg over the chestnut, and looking askew at the Yorkshireman as he mounted.  “Tatt., and old Tatt., and Tatt. sen. before him, all agree that they never knew a bad ’oss with a rat-tail.”

[Footnote 11:  A favourite joke among grooms when a horse is turned round in his stall.]

“But, let me tell you, you must be werry lively, if you mean to live with our ’ounds.  They go like the wind.  But come! touch him with the spur, and let’s do a trot.”  The Yorkshireman obeyed, and getting into the main street, onwards they jogged, right through Croydon, and struck into a line of villas of all sorts, shapes, and sizes, which extend for several miles along the road, exhibiting all sorts of architecture, Gothic, Corinthian, Doric, Ionic, Dutch, and Chinese.  These gradually diminished in number, and at length they found themselves on an open heath, within a few miles of the meet of the “Surrey foxhounds”.  “Now”, says Mr. Jorrocks, clawing up his smalls, “you will see the werry finest pack of hounds in all England; I don’t care where the next best are; and you will see as good a turn-out as ever you saw in your life, and as nice a country to ride over as ever you were in”.

They reach the meet—­a wayside public-house on a common, before which the hounds with their attendants and some fifty or sixty horsemen, many of them in scarlet, were assembled.  Jorrocks was received with the greatest cordiality, amid whoops and holloas, and cries of “now Twankay!—­now Sugar!—­now Figs!” Waving his hand in token of recognition, he passed on and made straight for Tom Hill, with a face full of importance, and nearly rode over a hound in his hurry.  “Now, Tom,” said he, with the greatest energy, “do, my good fellow, strain every nerve to show sport to-day.—­A gentleman has come all the way from the north-east side of the town of Boroughbridge, in the county of York, to see our excellent ’ounds, and I would fain have him galvanised.—­Do show us a run, and let it end with blood, so that he may have something to tell the natives when he gets back to his own parts.  That’s him, see, sitting under the yew-tree, in a bottle-green coat with basket buttons, just striking a light on the pommel of his saddle to indulge in a fumigation.—­Keep your eye on him all day, and if you can lead him over an awkward place, and get him a purl, so much the better.—­If he’ll risk his neck I’ll risk my ’oss’s.”