Mr. Waffles was a ‘pretty man.’  Tall, slim, and slight, with long curly light hair, pink and white complexion, visionary whispers, and a tendency to moustache that could best be seen sideways.  He had light blue eyes; while his features generally were good, but expressive of little beyond great good-humour.  In dress, he was both smart and various; indeed, we feel a difficulty in fixing him in any particular costume, so frequent and opposite were his changes.  He had coats of every cut and colour.  Sometimes he was the racing man with a bright-button’d Newmarket brown cut-away, and white-cord trousers, with drab cloth-boots; anon, he would be the officer, and shine forth in a fancy forage cap, cocked jauntily over a profusion of well-waxed curls, a richly braided surtout, with military overalls strapped down over highly varnished boots, whose hypocritical heels would sport a pair of large rowelled long-necked, ringing, brass spurs.  Sometimes he was a Jack tar, with a little glazed hat, a once-round tie, a checked shirt, a blue jacket, roomy trousers, and broad-stringed pumps; and, before the admiring ladies had well digested him in that dress, he would be seen cantering away on a long-tailed white barb, in a pea-green duck-hunter, with cream-coloured leather and rose-tinted tops.  He was

    ‘All things by turns, and nothing long.’

Such was the gentleman elected to succeed the silent, matter-of-fact Mr. Slocdolager in the important office of Master of the Laverick Wells Hunt; and whatever may be the merits of either—­upon which we pass no opinion—­it cannot be denied that they were essentially different.  Mr. Slocdolager was a man of few words, and not at all a ladies’ man.  He could not even talk when he was crammed with wine, and though he could hold a good quantity, people soon found out they might just as well pour it into a jug as down his throat, so they gave up asking him out.  He was a man of few coats, as well as of few words; one on, and one off, being the extent of his wardrobe.  His scarlet was growing plum-colour, and the rest of his hunting costume has been already glanced at.  He lodged above Smallbones, the veterinary surgeon, in a little back street, where he lived in the quietest way, dining when he came in from hunting,—­dressing, or rather changing, only when he was wet, hunting each fox again over his brandy-and-water, and bundling off to bed long before many of his ‘field’ had left the dining-room.  He was little better than a better sort of huntsman.

Waffles, as we said before, had made himself conspicuous towards the close of Mr. Slocdolager’s reign, chiefly by his dashing costume, his reckless riding, and his off-hand way of blowing up and slanging people.