“I vish I’d brought a numberella,” said Grubbs.

“Lank! vot a pretty fellow you are for a sportsman!” said Spriggs, “it don’t damp my hardour in the least.  All veathers comes alike to me, as the butcher said ven he vos a slaughtering the sheep!”

Mr. Richard Grubb, here joined in the laugh of his good-humoured friend, whose unwearied tongue kept him in spirits—­rather mixed indeed than neat—­for the rain now poured down in a perfect torrent.

“I say, Dick,” said Spriggs, “vy are ve two like razors?”

“Cos ve’re good-tempered?”

“Werry good; but that aint it exactly—­cos ve’re two bright blades, vot has got a beautiful edge!”

“A hexcellent conundrum,” exclaimed Grubb.  “Vere do you get ’em?’

“All made out of my own head,—­as the boy said ven be showed the wooden top-spoon to his father!”

CHAPTER VII.

A sudden Explosion—­a hit by one of the Sportsmen, which the other takes amiss.

A blustering wind arose, and like a burly coachman on mounting his box, took up the rain!

The two crouching friends taking advantage of the cessation in the storm, prepared to start.  But in straightening the acute angles of their legs and arms, Mr. Sprigg’s piece, by some entanglement in his protecting garb, went off, and the barrel striking Mr. Grubb upon the os nasi, stretched him bawling on the humid turf.

“O!  Lord!  I’m shot.”

“O! my heye!” exclaimed the trembling Spriggs.

“O! my nose!” roared Grubb.

“Here’s a go!”

“It’s no go!—­I’m a dead man!” blubbered Mr. Richard.  Mr. Augustus Spriggs now raised his chum upon his legs, and was certainly rather alarmed at the sanguinary effusion.

“Vere’s your hankercher?—­here!—­take mine,—­that’s it—­there!—­let’s look at it.”

“Can you see it?” said Grubb, mournfully twisting about his face most ludicrously, and trying at the same time to level his optics towards the damaged gnomon.

“Yes!”

“I can’t feel it,” said Grubb; “it’s numbed like dead.”

“My gun vent off quite by haccident, and if your nose is spoilt, can’t you have a vax von?—­Come, it ain’t so bad!”

“A vax von, indeed!—­who vouldn’t rather have his own nose than all the vax vons in the vorld?” replied poor Richard.  “I shall never be able to show my face.”

“Vy not?—­your face ain’t touched, it’s on’y your nose!”

“See, if I come out agin in an hurry,” continued the wounded sportsman.  “I’ve paid precious dear for a day’s fun.  The birds vill die a nat’ral death for me, I can tell you.”

“It vos a terrible blow—­certainly,” said Spriggs; “but these things vill happen in the best riggle’ated families!”

“How can that be? there’s no piece, in no quiet and respectable families as I ever seed!”

And with this very paradoxical dictum, Mr. Grubb trudged on, leading himself by the nose; Spriggs exerting all his eloquence to make him think lightly of what Grubb considered such a heavy affliction; for after all, although he had received a terrible contusion, there were no bones broken:  of which Spriggs assured his friend and himself with a great deal of feeling!