The fact was, the whole hunt was knocked up in a hurry.  Sir Harry, and the choice spirits by whom he was surrounded, had not finished celebrating the triumphs of the Snobston Green day, and as it was not likely that the hounds would be out again soon, the people of the hunting establishment were taking their ease.  Watchorn had gone to be entertained at a public supper, given by the poachers and fox-stealers of the village of Bark-shot, as a ’mark of respect for his abilities as a sportsman and his integrity as a man,’ meaning his indifference to his master’s interests; while the first-whip had gone to visit his aunt, and the groom was away negotiating the exchange of a cow.  With things in this state, Wily Tom of Tinklerhatch, a noted fox-stealer in Lord Scamperdale’s country, had arrived with a great thundering dog fox, stolen from his lordship’s cover near the cross roads at Dallington Burn, which being communicated to our friends about midnight in the smoking-room at Nonsuch House, it was resolved to hunt him forthwith, especially as one of the guests, Mr. Orlando Bugles, of the Surrey Theatre, was obliged to return to town immediately, and, as he sometimes enacted the part of Squire Tallyho, it was thought a little of the reality might correct the Tom and Jerry style in which he did it.  Accordingly, orders were issued for a hunt, notwithstanding the hounds were fed and the horses watered.  Sir Harry didn’t ’care a rap; let them go as fast as they could.’

All these circumstances conspired to make them late; added to which, when Watchorn, the huntsman, cast up, which he did on a higgler’s horse, he found the only sound one in his stud had gone to the neighbouring town to get some fiddlers—­her ladyship having determined to compliment Mr. Bugles’ visit by a quadrille party.  Bugles and she were old friends.  When Mr. Sponge cast up at half-past eleven, things were still behind-hand.

Sir Harry and party had had a wet night of it, and were all more or less drunk.  They had kept up the excitement with a champagne breakfast and various liqueurs, to say nothing of cigars.  They were a sad debauched-looking set, some of them scarcely out of their teens, with pallid cheeks, trembling hands, sunken eyes, and all the symptoms of premature decay.  Others—­the sock-and-buskin ones—­were a made-up, wigged, and padded set.  Bugles was resplendent.  He had on a dress scarlet coat, lined and faced with yellow satin (one of the properties, we believe, of the Victoria), a beautifully worked pink shirt-front, a pitch-plaster coloured waistcoat, white ducks, and jack-boots, with brass heel spurs.  He carried his whip in the arm’s-length-way of a circus master following a horse.  Some dozen of these curiosities were staggering, and swaggering, and smoking in front of Nonsuch House, to the edification of a lot of gaping grooms and chawbacons, when Mr. Sponge cantered becomingly up on the piebald.  Lady Scattercash, with several elegantly dressed females, all with cigars in their mouths, were conversing with them from the open drawing-room windows above, while sundry good-looking damsels ogled them from the attics above.  Such was the tableau that presented itself to Mr. Sponge as he cantered round the turn that brought him in front of the Elizabethan mansion of Nonsuch House.