, taking his advantage,
should get the Colonel into a lonely place and borrow money of him.
And the winner on Podasokus could not be alone during the whole of that
afternoon, so closely did his friends watch him and each other.

At another part of the course you might have seen a vehicle certainly
more modest, if not more shabby than that battered coach which had
brought down the choice spirits from the Harlequin's Head; this was
cab No. 2002, which had conveyed a gentleman and two ladies from the
cabstand in the Strand: whereof one of the ladies, as she sate on the
box of the cab enjoying with her mamma and their companion a repast of
lobster salad and bitter ale, looked so fresh and pretty that many of
the splendid young dandies who were strolling about the course, and
enjoying themselves at the noble diversion of Sticks, and talking to
the beautifully dressed ladies in the beautiful carriages, on the
hill, forsook these fascinations to have a glance at the smiling and
rosy-cheeked lass on the cab. The blushes of youth and good-humour
mantled on the girl's cheeks, and played over that fair countenance
like the pretty shining cloudlets on the serene sky overhead; the
elder lady's cheek was red too; but that was a permanent mottled
rose, deepening only as it received free draughts of pale ale and
brandy-and-water, until her face emulated the rich shell of the lobster
which she devoured.

The gentleman who escorted these two ladies was most active in
attendance upon them: here on the course, as he had been during the
previous journey. During the whole of that animated and delightful drive
from London, his jokes had never ceased. He spoke up undauntedly to the
most awful drags full of the biggest and most solemn guardsmen; as to
the humblest donkey-chaise in which Bob the dustman was driving Molly
to the race. He had fired astonishing volleys of what is called "chaff"
into endless windows as he passed; into lines of grinning girls'
schools; into little regiments of shouting urchins hurraying behind the
railings of their Classical and Commercial Academies; into casements
whence smiling maid-servants, and nurses tossing babies, or demure old
maiden ladies with dissenting countenances, were looking. And the pretty
girl in the straw bonnet with pink ribbon, and her mamma the devourer
of lobsters, had both agreed that when he was in "spirits" there was
nothing like that Mr. Sam. He had crammed the cab with trophies won
from