and Sir Harry once more essays to drive them up the hill to the stand.  That feat being accomplished, then came the unloading, and consternation, and huddling of the tight-laced occupants at the idea of these female women coming amongst them, and the usual peeping and spying, and eyeing of the ‘creatures.’  ‘What impudence!’ ‘Well, I think!’ ‘’Pon my word!’ ’What next!’—­exclamations that were pretty well lost upon the fair objects of them amid the noise and flutter and confusion of the scene.  But hark again!  What’s up now?

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‘Hooray!’ ‘hooray!’ ‘h-o-o-o-ray!’ ’Three cheers for the Squire!  H-o-o-o-ray!’ Old Puff as we live!  The ‘amazin’ instance of a pop’lar man’ greeted by the Swillingford snobs.  The old frost-bitten dandy is flattered by the cheers, and bows condescendingly ere he alights from the well-appointed mail phaeton.  See how graciously the ladies receive him, as, having ascended the stairs, he appears among them.  ’A man is never too old to marry’ is their maxim.

The cry is still, ‘They come! they come!’ See at a hand-gallop, with his bay pony in a white lather, rides Pacey, grinning from ear to ear, with his red-backed betting-book peeping out of the breast pocket of his brown cutaway.  He is staring and gaping to see who is looking at him.

Pacey has made such a book as none but a wooden-headed boy like himself could make.  He has been surfeited with tips.  Peeping Tom had advised him to back Daddy Longlegs; and, nullus error, Sneaking Joe has counselled him that the ‘Baronet’ will be ’California without cholera, and gold without danger’; while Jemmy something, the jockey, who advertises that his ’tongue is not for falsehood framed,’ though we should think it was framed for nothing else, has urged him to back Parvo to half the amount of the national debt.

Altogether, Pacey has made such a mess that he cannot possibly win, and may lose almost any sum from a thousand pounds down to a hundred and eighty.  Mr. Sponge has got well on with him, through the medium of Jack Spraggon.

Pacey is now going to what he calls ’compare’—­see that he has got his bets booked right; and, throwing his right leg over his cob’s neck, he blobs on to the ground; and, leaving the pony to take care of itself, disappears in the crowd.

What a hubbub! what roarings, and shoutings, and recognizings!  ’Bless my heart! who’d have thought of seeing you?’ and, ’By jingo! what’s sent you here?’

‘My dear Waffles,’ cries Jawleyford, rushing up to our Laverick Wells friend (who is looking very debauched), ’I’m overjoyed to see you.  Do come upstairs and see Mrs. Jawleyford and the dear girls.  It was only last night we were talking about you.’  And so Jawleyford hurries Mr. Waffles off, just as Waffles is in extremis about his horse.