that ‘want of decency is want of sense,’ and see how I am rewarded!  Oh dear! oh dear! that I should ever have trusted my pantaloons out of my sight.”  While all this, which was the work of a moment, was going forward, the mob, which had been shut out at the side door on Jorrocks’s entry, had got round to the coffee-room window, and were all wedging their faces in to have a sight of him.  It was principally composed of children, who kept up the most discordant yells, mingled with shouts of “there’s old cutty shirt!”—­“who’s got your breeches, old cock?”—­“make a scramble!”—­“turn him out for another hunt!”—­“turn him again!”—­until, fearing for the respectability of his house, the landlord persuaded Mr. Jorrocks to retire into the bar to state his grievances.  It then appeared that having travelled along the coast, as far as the first preventive stationhouse on the Ramsgate side of Margate, the grocer had thought it a convenient place for performing his intended ablutions, and, accordingly, proceeded to do what all people of either sex agree upon in such cases—­namely to divest himself of his garments; but before he completed the ceremony, observing some females on the cliffs above, and not being (as he said) a man “to raise a blush on the cheek of modesty,” he advanced to the water’s edge in his aforesaid unmentionables, and forgetting that it was not yet high tide, he left them there, when they were speedily covered, and the pockets being full of silver and copper, of course they were “swamped.”  After dabbling about in the water and amusing himself with picking up sea-weed for about ten minutes, Mr. Jorrocks was horrified, on returning to the spot where he thought he had left his stocking-net pantaloons, to find that they had disappeared; and after a long fruitless search, the unfortunate gentleman was compelled to abandon the pursuit, and render himself an object of chase to all the little boys and girls who chose to follow him into Margate on his return without them.

Jorrocks, as might be expected, was very bad about his loss, and could not get over it—­it stuck in his gizzard, he said—­and there it seemed likely to remain.  In vain Mr. Creed offered him a pair of trousers—­he never had worn a pair.  In vain he asked for the loan of a pair of white cords and top-boots, or even drab shorts and continuations.  Mr. Creed was no sportsman, and did not keep any.  The bellman could not cry the lost unmentionables because it was Sunday, and even if they should be found on the ebbing of the tide, they would take no end of time to dry.  Mr. Jorrocks declared his pleasure at an end, and forthwith began making inquiries as to the best mode of getting home.  The coaches were all gone, steamboats there were none, save for every place but London, and posting, he said, was “cruelly expensive.”  In the midst of his dilemma, “Boots,” who is always the most intelligent man about an inn, popped in his curly head, and informed Mr. Jorrocks that the Unity hoy, a most commodious vessel, neat,