Formerly a remittance by post used to speak for itself.  The tender-fingered clerks could detect an enclosure, however skilfully folded.  Few people grudged double postage in those days.  Now one letter is so much like another, that nothing short of opening them makes one any wiser.  Mr. Sponge received Mr. Waffles’ answer from the hands of the waiter with the sort of feeling that it was only the continuation of their correspondence.  Judge, then, of his delight, when a nice, clean, crisp promissory note, on a five-shilling stamp, fell quivering to the floor.  A few lines, expressive of Mr. Waffles’ gratitude for the trouble our hero had taken, and hopes that it would not be inconvenient to take a note at two months, accompanied it.  At first Mr. Sponge was overjoyed.  It would set him up for the season.  He thought how he’d spend it.  He had half a mind to go to Melton.  There were no heiresses there, or else he would.  Leamington would do, only it was rather expensive.  Then he thought he might as well have done Waffles a little more.

‘Confound it!’ exclaimed Sponge, ’I don’t do myself justice!  I’m too much of a gentleman!  I should have had five ’under’d—­such an ass as Waffles deserves to be done!’

CHAPTER XIII

A NEW SCHEME

[Illustration]

Our friend Soapey was now in good feather; he had got a large price for his good-for-nothing horse, with a very handsome bonus for not getting him back, making him better off than he had been for some time.  Gentlemen of his calibre are generally extremely affluent in everything except cash.  They have bills without end—­bills that nobody will touch, and book debts in abundance—­book debts entered with metallic pencils in curious little clasped pocket-books, with such utter disregard of method that it would puzzle an accountant to comb them into anything like shape.

It is true, what Mr. Sponge got from Mr. Waffles were bills—­but they were good bills, and of such reasonable date as the most exacting of the Jew tribe would ‘do’ for twenty per cent.  Mr. Sponge determined to keep the game alive, and getting Hercules and Multum in Parvo together again, he added a showy piebald hack, that Buckram had just got from some circus people who had not been able to train him to their work.

The question now was, where to manoeuvre this imposing stud—­a problem that Mr. Sponge quickly solved.

Among the many strangers who rushed into indiscriminate friendship with our hero at Laverick Wells, was Mr. Jawleyford, of Jawleyford Court, in ——­shire.  Jawleyford was a great humbug.  He was a fine, off-hand, open-hearted, cheery sort of fellow, who was always delighted to see you, would start at the view, and stand with open arms in the middle of the street, as though quite overjoyed at the meeting.  Though he never gave dinners, nor anything where he was, he asked everybody, at least everybody who did give them, to visit him at Jawleyford Court.  If a man was fond of fishing, he must come to Jawleyford Court, he must, indeed; he would take no refusal, he wouldn’t leave him alone till he promised.  He would show him such fishing—­no waters in the world to compare with his.  The Shannon and the Tweed were not to be spoken of in the same day as his waters in the Swiftley.