the
inmates of a cottage by the roadside, a sudden gleam of moonlight fell upon
the building, revealing the half-Swiss, half-Gothic lodge of Puddingpote
Bower.

CHAPTER LIII

PUDDINGPOTE BOWER

We must now back the train a little, and have a look at Jog and Co.

Mr. and Mrs. Jog had had another squabble after Mr. Sponge's departure in
the morning, Mr. Jog reproving Mrs. Jog for the interest she seemed to take
in Mr. Sponge, as shown by her going to the door to see him amble away on
the piebald hack. Mrs. Jog justified herself on the score of Gustavus
James, with whom she was quite sure Mr. Sponge was much struck, and to
whom, she made no doubt, he would leave his ample fortune. Jog, on the
other hand, wheezed and puffed into his frill, and reasserted that Mr.
Sponge was as likely to live as Gustavus James, and to marry and to have a
bushel of children of his own; while Mrs. Jog rejoined that he was 'sure to
break his neck'--breaking their necks being, as she conceived, the
inevitable end of fox-hunters. Jog, who had not prosecuted the sport of
hunting long enough to be able to gainsay her assertion, though he took
especial care to defer the operation of breaking his own neck as long as he
could, fell back upon the expense and inconvenience of keeping Mr. Sponge
and his three horses, and his saucy servant, who had taught their domestics
to turn up their noses at his diet table; above all, at his stick-jaw and
undeniable small-beer. So they went fighting and squabbling on, till at
last the scene ended, as usual, by Mrs. Jogglebury bursting into tears, and
declaring that Jog didn't care a farthing either for her or her children.
Jog then bundled off, to try and fashion a most incorrigible-looking,
knotty blackthorn into a head of Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst. He afterwards
took a turn at a hazel that he thought would make a Joe Hume. Having
occupied himself with these till the children's dinner-hour, he took a
wandering, snatching sort of meal, and then put on his paletot, with a
little hatchet in the pocket, and went off in search of the raw material in
his own and the neighbouring hedges.

Evening came, and with it came Jog, laden, as usual, with an armful of
gibbeys, but the shades of night followed evening ere there was any tidings
of the sporting inmates of his house. At length, just as Jog was taking his
last stroll prior to going in for good, he espied a pair of vacillating
white breeches coming up the ave