[Illustration:  JACK PROTESTS AGAINST ALL RAILWAYS]

Jack was highly enraged, and proceeded to squint his eyes inside out, and abuse all railways, and chairmen, and directors, and secretaries, and clerks, and porters, vowing that railways were the greatest nuisances under the sun—­that they were a perfect impediment instead of a facility to travelling—­and declared that formerly a gentleman had nothing to do but order his four horses, and have them turned out at every stage as he came up, instead of being stopped in the ridicklous manner he then was; and he strutted and stamped about the station as if he would put a stop to the whole line.  His vehemence and big talk operated favourably on the Cockney station-master, who, thinking he must be a duke, or some great man, began to consider how to get him forwarded.  It being only a thinly populated district—­though there was a station equal to any mercantile emergency, indeed to the requirements of the whole county—­he ran the resources of the immediate neighbourhood through his mind, and at length was obliged to admit—­humbly and respectfully—­that he really was afraid Martha Muggins’s donkey was the only available article.

Jack fumed and bounced at the very mention of such a thing, vowing that it was a downright insult to propose it; and he was so bumptious that the station-master, who had nothing to gain by the transaction, sought the privacy of the electric telegraph office, and left him to vent the balance of his wrath upon the porters.

Of course they could do nothing more than the king of their little colony had suggested; and finding there was no help for it, Mr. Spraggon at last submitted to the humiliation, and set off to follow young Muggins with his bag on the donkey, in his best top-boots, worn under his trousers—­an unpleasant operation to any one, but especially to a man like Jack, who preferred wearing his tops out against the flaps of his friends’ saddles, rather than his soles by walking upon them.  However, necessity said yes; and cocking his flat hat jauntily on his head, he stuck a cheroot in his mouth, and went smoking and swaggering on, looking—­or rather squinting—­bumptiously at everybody he met, as much as to say, ’Don’t suppose I’m walking from necessity!  I’ve plenty of tin.’

The third cheroot brought Jack and his suite within sight of Hanby House.

Mr. Puffington had about got through all the fuss of his preparations, arranged the billets of the guests and of those scarcely less important personages—­their servants, allotted the stables, and rehearsed the wines, when a chance glance through the gaily furnished drawing-room window discovered Jack trudging up the trimly kept avenue.

‘Here’s that nasty Spraggon,’ exclaimed he, eyeing Jack dragging his legs along, adding, ’I’ll be bound to say he’ll never think of wiping his filthy feet if I don’t go to meet him.’

So saying, Puffington rushed to the entrance, and crowning himself with a white wide-awake, advanced cheerily to do so.