rafters in the kitchen, and cellars, and out-houses, were crowded with others in a state of _deshabille_. He calculated his stock at immense worth, we don't know how many thousand pounds; and as he cut, and puffed, and wheezed, and modelled, with a volume of Buffon, or the picture of some eminent man before him, he chuckled, and thought how well he was providing for his family. He had been at it so long, and argued so stoutly, that Mrs. Jogglebury Crowdey, if not quite convinced of the accuracy of his calculations, nevertheless thought it well to encourage his hunting predilections, inasmuch as it brought him in contact with people he would not otherwise meet, who, she thought, might possibly be useful to their children. Accordingly, she got him his breakfast betimes on hunting-mornings, charged his pockets with currant-buns, and saw to the mending of his moleskins when he came home, after any of those casualties that occur as well in the chase as in gibbey-stick hunting. A stranger being a marked man in a rural country, Mr. Sponge excited more curiosity in Mr. Jogglebury Crowdey's mind than Mr. Jogglebury Crowdey did in Mr. Sponge's. In truth, Jogglebury was one of those unsportsmanlike beings, that a regular fox-hunter would think it waste of words to inquire about, and if Mr. Sponge saw him, he did not recollect him; while, on the other hand, Mr. Jogglebury Crowdey went home very full of our friend. Now, Mrs. Jogglebury Crowdey was a fine, bustling, managing woman, with a large family, for whom she exerted all her energies to procure desirable god-papas and mammas; and, no sooner did she hear of this newcomer, than she longed to appropriate him for god-papa to their youngest son. 'Jog, my dear,' said she, to her spouse, as they sat at tea; 'it would be well to look after him.' 'What for, my dear?' asked Jog, who was staring a stick, with a half-finished head of Lord Brougham for a handle, out of countenance. 'What for, Jog? Why, can't you guess?' 'No,' replied Jog doggedly. 'No!' ejaculated his spouse. 'Why, Jog, you certainly are the stupidest man in existence.' 'Not necessarily!' replied Jog, with a jerk of his head and a puff into his shirt-frill that set it all in a flutter. 'Not necessarily!' replied Mrs. Jogglebury, who was what they call a 'spirited woman,' in the same rising tone as before. 'Not necessarily! but I say necessarily--yes, necessarily. Do you hear me, Mr. Jogglebury?' 'I hear you,' replied Jogglebury scornfully, with another jerk, and another puff into the frill. The two then sat silent for some minutes, Jogglebury still contemplating the progressing head of Lord Brougham, and recalling the eye and features that some five-and-twenty years before had nearly withered him in a breach of promise action, 'Smiler _v_. Jogglebury,'[3] that being our friend's name before his uncle Crowdey left him his property. [Illustration]