er allowed to tread upon it except in
pumps or slippers. The bell-pulls were made of foxes' brushes, and in
the frame of the looking-glass, above the white marble mantelpiece,
were stuck visiting-cards, notes of invitation, thanks for "obliging
inquiries," etc. The hearth-rug exhibited a bright yellow tiger, with
pink eyes, on a blue ground, with a flossy green border; and the fender
and fire-irons were of shining brass. On the wall, immediately opposite
the fire-place, was a portrait of Mrs. Jorrocks before she was married,
so unlike her present self that no one would have taken it for her. The
back drawing-room, which looked out upon the gravel walk and house-backs
beyond, was papered with broad scarlet and green stripes in honour of
the Surrey Hunt uniform, and was set out with a green-covered library
table in the centre, with a red morocco hunting-chair between it and the
window, and several good strong hair-bottomed mahogany chairs around the
walls. The table had a very literary air, being strewed with sporting
magazines, odd numbers of _Bell's Life_, pamphlets, and papers of
various descriptions, while on a sheet of foolscap on the portfolio were
ten lines of an elegy on a giblet pie which had been broken in coming
from the baker's, at which Mr. Jorrocks had been hammering for some
time. On the side opposite the fire-place, on a hanging range of
mahogany shelves, were ten volumes of _Bell's Life in London_, the _New
Sporting Magazine_, bound gilt and lettered, the _Memoirs of Harriette
Wilson, Boxiana_, Taplin's _Farriery_, Nimrod's _Life of Mytton_, and a
backgammon board that Mr. Jorrocks had bought by mistake for a history
of England.

Mrs. Jorrocks, as we said before, was sitting in state at the far side
of the round table, on a worsted-worked ottoman exhibiting a cock
pheasant on a white ground, and was fanning herself with a red-and-white
paper fan, and turning over the leaves of an annual. How Mr. Jorrocks
happened to marry her, no one could ever divine, for she never was
pretty, had very little money, and not even a decent figure to recommend
her. It was generally supposed at the time, that his brother Joe and
he having had a deadly feud about a bottom piece of muffin, the lady's
friends had talked him into the match, in the hopes of his having a
family to leave his money to, instead of bequeathing it to Joe or his
children. Certain it is, they never were meant for each other; Mr.
Jorrocks, as our readers