Mr. Waffles’ succession to the hunt made a great commotion among the fair—­many elegant and interesting young ladies, who had been going on the pious tack against the Reverend Solomon Winkeyes, the popular bachelor preacher of St. Margaret’s, teaching in his schools, distributing his tracts, and collecting the penny subscriptions for his clothing club, now took to riding in fan-tailed habits and feathered hats, and talking about leaping and hunting, and riding over rails.  Mr. Waffles had a pound of hat-strings sent him in a week, and muffatees innumerable.  Some, we are sorry to say, worked him cigar-cases.  He, in return, having expended a vast of toil and ingenuity in inventing a ‘button,’ now had several dozen of them worked up into brooches, which he scattered about with a liberal hand.  It was not one of your matter-of-fact story-telling buttons—­a fox with ‘TALLY-HO,’ or a fox’s head grinning in grim death—­making a red coat look like a miniature butcher’s shamble, but it was one of your queer-twisting lettered concerns, that may pass either for a military button or a naval button, or a club button, or even for a livery button.  The letters, two W’s, were so skilfully entwined, that even a compositor—­and compositors are people who can read almost anything—­would have been puzzled to decipher it.  The letters were gilt, riveted on steel, and the wearers of the button-brooches were very soon dubbed by the non-recipients, ‘Mr. Waffles’ sheep.’

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A fine button naturally requires a fine coat to put it on, and many were the consultations and propositions as to what it should be.  Mr. Slocdolager had done nothing in the decorative department, and many thought the failure of funds was a good deal attributable to that fact.  Mr. Waffles was not the man to lose an opportunity of adding another costume to his wardrobe, and after an infinity of trouble, and trials of almost all the colours of the rainbow, he at length settled the following uniform, which, at least, had the charm of novelty to recommend it.  The morning, or hunt-coat, was to be scarlet, with a cream-coloured collar and cuffs; and the evening, or dress coat, was to be cream-colour, with a scarlet collar and cuffs, and scarlet silk facings and linings, looking as if the wearer had turned the morning one inside out.  Waistcoats, and other articles of dress, were left to the choice of the wearer, experience having proved that they are articles it is impossible to legislate upon with any effect.

The old ladies, bless their disinterested hearts, alone looked on the hound freak with other than feelings of approbation.

They thought it a pity he should take them.  They wished he mightn’t injure himself—­hounds were expensive things—­led to habits of irregularity—­should be sorry to see such a nice young man as Mr. Waffles led astray—­not that it would make any difference to them, but—­(looking significantly at their daughters).  No fox had been hunted by more hounds than Waffles had been by the ladies; but though he had chatted and prattled with fifty fair maids—­any one of whom he might have found difficult to resist, if ‘pinned’ single-handed by, in a country house, yet the multiplicity of assailants completely neutralized each other, and verified the truth of the adage that there is ‘safety in a crowd.’