“Send Mr. Pringle’s valet here! send Mr. Pringle’s valet here!” exclaimed he, as the half-davered footman came staring in, followed by the ticket-of-leave butler, “Here, Monsieur!” continued he, as Rougier’s hairy face now peeped past the door, “your master wants you—eat something that’s disagreed with him—that partridge-pie, I think, for I feel rather squeamish myself; and you, Bankhead,” added he, addressing the butler, “just bring us each a drop of brandy, not that nasty brown stuff Mother Margermn puts into the puddings, but some of the white, you know—the best, you know,” saying which, with a “now old boy!” he gave Billy a hoist from his seat by the arm, and sent him away with his servant. The brandy, however, never came, Bankhead declaring they had drunk all he had out, the other night. So Cuddy was obliged to console himself with his cigars and _Bell’s Life_, which latter he read, marked, learned, and inwardly digested, pausing every now and then at the speculative passages, wondering whether Wilkinson and Kidd, or Messrs. Wilkinson and Co. were the parties who had the honour of having his name on their books, where Henry Just, the backer of horses, got the Latin for his advertisement from, and considering whether Nairn Sahib, the Indian fiend, should be roasted alive or carried round the world in a cage. He also went through the column and a quarter of the meets of hounds again, studied the doings at Copenhagen Grounds, Salford Borough Gardens, and Hornsea Wood, and finally finished off with the time of high-water at London Bridge, and the list of pedestrian matches to come. He then folded the paper carefully up and replaced it in his pocket, feeling equal to a dialogue with anybody. Having examined the day through the window, he next strolled to his old friend the weather-glass at the bottom of the stairs, and then constituting himself huntsman to a pack of hounds, proceeded to draw the house for our Billy; “_Y-o-o-icks_, wind him! _y-o-o-icks_, push him up!” holloaed he, going leisurely up-stairs, “_E’leu in there! E’leu in!_” continued he, on arriving at a partially closed door on the first landing. “_There’s nobody here! There’s nobody here!_” exclaimed Mrs. Margerum, hurrying out. “There’s nobody here, sir!” repeated she, holding steadily on by the door, to prevent any one entering where she was busy packing her weekly basket of perquisites, or what the Americans more properly call “stealings.” “Nobody here! bitch-fox, at all events!” retorted Cuddy, eyeing her confusion—“where’s Mr. Pringle’s room?” asked he.