ce for 'em.'

'YOU know the price of 'em well enough, and so does your master too, you
scoundrel,' says Ponto, still retreating.

'We kill 'em on our ground,' cries Mr. Snapper. 'WE don't set traps for
other people's birds. We're no decoy ducks. We're no sneaking poachers.
We don't shoot 'ens, like that 'ere Cockney, who's got the tail of one
a-sticking out of his pocket. Only just come across the hedge, that's
all.'

'I tell you what,' says Stripes, who was out with us as keeper this
day, (in fact he's keeper, coachman, gardener, valet, and bailiff, with
Tummus under him,) 'if YOU'LL come across, John Snapper, and take your
coat off, I'll give you such a whopping as you've never had since the
last time I did it at Guttlebury Fair.'

'Whop one of your own weight,' Mr. Snapper said, whistling his dogs
and disappearing into the wood. And so we came out of this controversy
rather victoriously; but I began to alter my preconceived ideas of rural
felicity.

Notes.

(1) I have since heard that this aristocratic lady's father was a
livery-button maker in St. Martin's Lane: where he met with misfortunes,
and his daughter acquired her taste for heraldry. But it may be told
to her credit, that out of her earnings she has kept the bed-ridden old
bankrupt in great comfort and secrecy at Pentonville; and furnished her
brother's outfit for the Cadetship which her patron, Lord Swigglebiggle,
gave her when he was at the Board of Control. I have this information
from a friend. To hear Miss Wirt herself, you would fancy that her Papa
was a Rothschild, and that the markets of Europe were convulsed when he
went into the GAZETTE.

CHAPTER XXVIII--ON SOME COUNTRY SNOBS

'Be hanged to your aristocrats!' Ponto said, in some conversation we had
regarding the family at Carabas, between whom and the Evergreens there
was a feud. 'When I first came into the county--it was the year before
Sir John Buff contested in the Blue interest--the Marquis, then Lord St.
Michaels, who, of course, was Orange to the core, paid me and Mrs. Ponto
such attentions, that I fairly confess I was taken in by the old humbug,
and thought that I'd met with a rare neighbour. 'Gad, Sir, we used to
get pines from Carabas, and pheasants from Carabas, and it was--"Ponto,
when will you come over and shoot?"--and--"Ponto, our pheasants want
thinning,"--and my Lady would insist upon her dear Mrs. Ponto coming
over to Carabas to sleep, and put me I don't know to what