t, Angola vest, and
penetrated the very cockles of his heart. He gave her such a series of
smacking kisses as startled her horse and astonished a poacher who
happened to be hid in the adjoining hedge.

Sponge was never so happy in his life. He could have stood on his head, or
been guilty of any sort of extravagance, short of wasting his money. Oh, he
was happy! Oh, he was joyous! He was intoxicated with pleasure. As he eyed
his angelic charmer, her lustrous eyes, her glowing cheeks, her pearly
teeth, the bewitching fulness of her elegant _tournure_, and thought of the
masterly way she rode the run--above all, of the dashing style in which she
charged the mill-race--he felt a something quite different to anything he
had experienced with any of the buxom widows or lackadaisical misses whom
he could just love or not, according to circumstances, among whom his
previous experience had lain. Miss Glitters, he knew, had nothing, and yet
he felt he could not do without her; the puzzlement of his mind was, how
the deuce they should manage matters--'make tongue and buckle meet,' as he
elegantly phrased it.

It is pleasant to hear a bachelor's pros and cons on the subject of
matrimony; how the difficulties of the gentleman out of love vanish or
change into advantages with the one in--'Oh, I would never think of
marrying without a couple of thousand a year at the _very least_!' exclaims
young Fastly. '_I_ can't do without four hunters and a hack. _I_ can't do
without a valet. _I_ can't do without a brougham. _I_ must belong to
half-a-dozen clubs. _I'll_ not marry any woman who can't keep me
comfortable--bachelors can live upon nothing--bachelors are welcome
everywhere--very different thing with a wife. Frightful things milliners'
bills--fifty guineas for a dress, twenty for a bonnet--ladies' maids are
the very devil--never satisfied--far worse to please than their
mistresses.' And between the whiffs of a cigar he hums the old saw--

'Needles and pins, needles and pins,
When a man marries his sorrow begins.'

Now take him on the other tack--Fast is smitten.

''Ord hang it! a married man can live on very little,' soliloquizes our
friend. A nice lovely creature to keep one at home. Hunting's all humbug;
it's only the flash of the thing that makes one follow it. Then the danger
far more than counterbalances the pleasure. Awful places one has to ride
over, to be sure, or submit to be called "slow." Horrible thing to set up