on. See how graciously the ladies receive him, as,
having ascended the stairs, he appears among them. 'A man is never too old
to marry' is their maxim.

The cry is still, 'They come! they come!' See at a hand-gallop, with his
bay pony in a white lather, rides Pacey, grinning from ear to ear, with his
red-backed betting-book peeping out of the breast pocket of his brown
cutaway. He is staring and gaping to see who is looking at him.

Pacey has made such a book as none but a wooden-headed boy like himself
could make. He has been surfeited with tips. Peeping Tom had advised him to
back Daddy Longlegs; and, _nullus error_, Sneaking Joe has counselled him
that the 'Baronet' will be 'California without cholera, and gold without
danger'; while Jemmy something, the jockey, who advertises that his 'tongue
is not for falsehood framed,' though we should think it was framed for
nothing else, has urged him to back Parvo to half the amount of the
national debt.

Altogether, Pacey has made such a mess that he cannot possibly win, and may
lose almost any sum from a thousand pounds down to a hundred and eighty.
Mr. Sponge has got well on with him, through the medium of Jack Spraggon.

Pacey is now going to what he calls 'compare'--see that he has got his bets
booked right; and, throwing his right leg over his cob's neck, he blobs on
to the ground; and, leaving the pony to take care of itself, disappears in
the crowd.

What a hubbub! what roarings, and shoutings, and recognizings! 'Bless my
heart! who'd have thought of seeing you?' and, 'By jingo! what's sent _you_
here?'

'My dear Waffles,' cries Jawleyford, rushing up to our Laverick Wells
friend (who is looking very debauched), 'I'm overjoyed to see you. Do come
upstairs and see Mrs. Jawleyford and the dear girls. It was only last
night we were talking about you.' And so Jawleyford hurries Mr. Waffles
off, just as Waffles is _in extremis_ about his horse.

Looking around the scene there seems to be everybody that we have had the
pleasure of introducing to the reader in the course of Mr. Sponge's Tour.
Mr. and Mrs. Springwheat in their dog-cart, Mrs. Springey's figure looking
as though 'wheat had got above forty, my lord'; old Jog and his handsome
wife in the ugly old phaeton, well garnished with children, and a couple of
sticks in the rough peeping out of the apron, Gustavus James held up in his
mother's arms, with the curly blue feather nodding over his nose. There is
also Far