might possibly be useful to their
children. Accordingly, she got him his breakfast betimes on
hunting-mornings, charged his pockets with currant-buns, and saw to the
mending of his moleskins when he came home, after any of those casualties
that occur as well in the chase as in gibbey-stick hunting.

A stranger being a marked man in a rural country, Mr. Sponge excited more
curiosity in Mr. Jogglebury Crowdey's mind than Mr. Jogglebury Crowdey did
in Mr. Sponge's. In truth, Jogglebury was one of those unsportsmanlike
beings, that a regular fox-hunter would think it waste of words to inquire
about, and if Mr. Sponge saw him, he did not recollect him; while, on the
other hand, Mr. Jogglebury Crowdey went home very full of our friend. Now,
Mrs. Jogglebury Crowdey was a fine, bustling, managing woman, with a large
family, for whom she exerted all her energies to procure desirable
god-papas and mammas; and, no sooner did she hear of this newcomer, than
she longed to appropriate him for god-papa to their youngest son.

'Jog, my dear,' said she, to her spouse, as they sat at tea; 'it would be
well to look after him.'

'What for, my dear?' asked Jog, who was staring a stick, with a
half-finished head of Lord Brougham for a handle, out of countenance.

'What for, Jog? Why, can't you guess?'

'No,' replied Jog doggedly.

'No!' ejaculated his spouse. 'Why, Jog, you certainly are the stupidest man
in existence.'

'Not necessarily!' replied Jog, with a jerk of his head and a puff into his
shirt-frill that set it all in a flutter.

'Not necessarily!' replied Mrs. Jogglebury, who was what they call a
'spirited woman,' in the same rising tone as before. 'Not necessarily! but
I say necessarily--yes, necessarily. Do you hear me, Mr. Jogglebury?'

'I hear you,' replied Jogglebury scornfully, with another jerk, and another
puff into the frill.

The two then sat silent for some minutes, Jogglebury still contemplating
the progressing head of Lord Brougham, and recalling the eye and features
that some five-and-twenty years before had nearly withered him in a breach
of promise action, 'Smiler _v_. Jogglebury,'[3] that being our friend's
name before his uncle Crowdey left him his property.

[Illustration]

Mrs. Jogglebury having an object in view, and knowing that, though
Jogglebury might lead, he would not drive, availed herself of the lull to
trim her sail, to try and catch him on the other tack.

'Well, Mr. Jogglebury Crowdey,'