England -- Fiction; Fox hunting -- Fiction; Humorous stories; Hunting stories
This he sealed with the great seal of Jawleyford Court--a coat of arms
containing innumerable quarterings and heraldic devices. Having then
refreshed his memory by looking through a bundle of bills, and selected the
most threatening of the lawyers' letters to answer the next day, he
proceeded to keep up the delusion of sickness, by retiring to sleep in his
dressing-room. Our readers will now have the kindness to accompany us to
Lord Scamperdale's: time, the morning after the foregoing. 'Love me, love
my dog,' being a favourite saying of his lordship's, he fed himself, his
friends, and his hounds, on the same meal. Jack and he were busy with two
great basins full of porridge, which his lordship diluted with milk, while
Jack stirred his up with hot dripping, when the put-off note arrived. His
lordship was still in a complete suit of the great backgammon-board-looking
red-and-yellow Stunner tartan: but as Jack was going from home, he had got
himself into a pair of his lordship's yellow-ochre leathers and new
top-boots, while he wore the Stunner jacket and waistcoat to save his
lordship's Sunday green cutaway with metal buttons, and canary-coloured
waistcoat. His lordship did not eat his porridge with his usual appetite,
for he had had a disturbed night, Sponge having appeared to him in his
dreams in all sorts of forms and predicaments; now jumping a-top of
him--now upsetting Jack--now riding over Frostyface--now crashing among his
hounds; and he awoke, fully determined to get rid of him by fair means or
foul. Buying his horses did not seem so good a speculation as blowing his
credit at Jawleyford Court, for, independently of disliking to part with
his cash, his lordship remembered that there were other horses to get, and
he should only be giving Sponge the means of purchasing them. The more,
however, he thought of the Jawleyford project, the more satisfied he was
that it would do; and Jack and he were in a sort of rehearsal, wherein his
lordship personated Jawleyford, and was showing Jack (who was only a clumsy
diplomatist) how to draw up to the subject of Sponge's pecuniary
deficiencies, when the dirty old butler came with Jawleyford's note.
'What's here?' exclaimed his lordship, fearing from its smartness, that it
was from a lady. 'What's here?' repeated he, as he inspected the direction.
'Oh, it's for _you_!' exclaimed he, chucking it over to Jack, considerably
relieved by the discovery.
'_Me!_' replied Jack. 'Who can be writing to me?' said he, squinting his
eyes inside out at the seal. He opened it: 'Jawleyford Court,' read he.
'Who the deuce can be writing to me from Jawleyford Court when I'm going
there?'
'A put-off, for a guinea!' exclaimed his lordship.
'Hope so,' muttered Jack.
'Hope _not_,' replied his lordship.
'It is!' exclaimed Jack, reading, 'Dear Mr. Spraggon,' and so on.
'The humbug!' muttered Lord Scamperdale, adding, 'I'll be bound he's got no
more influenza than I have.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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