young fellow is!" sighed Mrs. Bungay. "Who'd have
thought when he came so quiet and demure to dine with us, three or four
years ago, he would turn out such a grand character! Why, I saw his name
at Court the other day, and presented by the Marquis of Steyne and all;
and in every party of the nobility his name's down as sure as a gun."

"I introduced him a good deal when he first came up to town," Mr. Archer
said, "and his uncle, Major Pendennis, did the rest. Hallo! There's
Cobden here, of all men in the world! I must go and speak to him.
Good-bye, Mrs. Bungay. Good morning, Mrs. Shandon."

An hour previous to this time, and at a different part of the course,
there might have been seen an old stage-coach, on the battered roof of
which a crowd of shabby raffs were stamping and hallooing, as the great
event of the day--the Derby race--rushed over the greensward, and by the
shouting millions of people assembled to view that magnificent scene.
This was Wheeler's (the Harlequin's Head) drag, which had brought down
a company of choice spirits from Bow Street, with a slap-up luncheon in
the boot. As the whirling race flashed by, each of the choice spirits
bellowed out the name of the horse or the colours which he thought or
he hoped might be foremost. "The Cornet!" "It's Muffineer!" "It's blue
sleeves!" "Yallow cap! yallow cap! yallow cap!" and so forth, yelled the
gentlemen sportsmen during that delicious and thrilling minute before
the contest was decided; and as the fluttering signal blew out, showing
the number of the famous horse Podasokus as winner of the race, one of
the gentlemen on the Harlequin's Head drag sprang up off the roof, as if
he was a pigeon and about to fly away to London or York with the news.

But his elation did not lift him many inches from his standing-place, to
which he came down again on the instant, causing the boards of the crazy
old coach-roof to crack with the weight of his joy. "Hurray, hurray!"
he bawled out, "Podasokus is the horse! Supper for ten, Wheeler, my boy.
Ask you all round of course, and damn the expense."

And the gentlemen on the carriage, the shabby swaggerers, the dubious
bucks, said, "Thank you--congratulate you, Colonel; sup with you with
pleasure:" and whispered to one another, "The Colonel stands to win
fifteen hundred, and he got the odds from a good man, too."

And each of the shabby bucks and dusky dandies began to eye his
neighbour with suspicion, lest that neighbour