"Yours is the Fifty-third?" said a guardsman.

"No; the Thirty-fifth."

"Aw! same thing," sighed he; and he stooped to select a cigar.

"I wish the Kennyfecks were not going," said Upton, drawing his chair
closer to Meek's; "there are so few houses one meets them at."

"You should speak to Linton about that," whispered Meek.

"Here's Jim's health,--hip, hip, hurrah!" cried out a white-moustached
boy, who had joined a hussar regiment a few weeks before, and was now
excessively tipsy.

The laughter at this toast was increased by Meek's holding out his glass
to be filled as he asked, "Of course,--whose health is it?"

"One of Frobisher's trainers," said Upton, readily.

"No, it's no such thing," hiccoughed the hussar. "I was proposing a
bumper to the lightest snaffle hand from this to Doncaster--the best
judge of a line of country in the kingdom--"

"That's me," said a jolly voice, and at the same instant the door was
flung wide, and Tom Linton, splashed from the road, and travel-stained,
entered.

"I must say, gentlemen, you are no churls of your wit and pleasantry,
for, as I came up the stairs, I could hear every word you were saying."

"Oh dear, how dreadful! and we were talking of _you_ too," said Meek,
with a piteous air that made every one laugh.

A thousand questions as to where he had been, whom with, and what
for?--all burst upon Linton, who only escaped importunity by declaring
that he was half dead with hunger, and would answer nothing till he had
eaten.

"So," said he, at length, after having devoted twenty minutes to a
grouse-pie of most cunning architecture, "you never guessed where I had
been?"

"Oh! we had guesses enough, if that served any purpose."

"I thought it was a bolt, Tom," said Upton; "but as _she_ appeared at
breakfast, as usual, I saw my mistake."

"Meek heard that you had gone over to Downing Street to ask for the
Irish Secretaryship," said Jennings.

"I said you had been to have a talk with Scott about 'Regulator;' was I
far off the mark?"

"Mrs. White suggested an uncle's death," said Frobisher; "but uncles
don't die nowadays."

"Did you buy the colt?--Have you backed 'Runjeet Singh?'--Are you to
have the agency?--How goes on the borough canvass?" and twenty similar
queries now poured in on him.

"Well, I see," cried he, laughing, "I shall sadly disappoint all the
calculations founded on my shrewdness and dexterity, for the whole
object of my journey was to secur