s thigh, and
his head turned to his fair companion on the white.

'Oh, the wretch!' sneers Miss Amelia; and the fair sisters look at Lucy and
then at him with the utmost disgust.

Mr. Sponge may now be doubled up by half a dozen falls ere either of them
would suggest the propriety of having him bled.

Lucy's cheeks are rather blanched with the 'pale cast of thought,' for she
is not sufficiently initiated in the mysteries of steeple-chasing to know
that it is often quite as good for a man to lose as to win, which it had
just been quietly arranged between Sponge and Buckram should be the case on
this occasion, Buckram having got uncommonly 'well on' to the losing tune.
Perhaps, however, Lucy was thinking of the peril, not the profit of the
thing.

The young ladies on the stand eye her with mingled feelings of pity and
disdain, while the elderly ones shake their heads, call her a bold
hussy--declare she's not so pretty--adding that they 'wouldn't have come if
they'd known,' &c. &c.

But it is half-past two (an hour and a half after time), and there is at
last a disposition evinced by some of the parties to go to the post.
Broad-backed parti-coloured jockeys are seen converging that way, and the
betting-men close in, getting more and more clamorous for odds. What a
hubbub! How they bellow! How they roar! A universal deafness seems to have
come over the whole of them. 'Seven to one 'gain the Bart.!' screams
one--'I'll take eight!' roars another. 'Five to one agen Herc'les!' cries a
third--'Done!' roars a fourth. 'Twice over!' rejoins the other--'Done!'
replies the taker. 'Ar'll take five to one agin the Daddy!'--'I'll lay
six!' 'What'll any one lay 'gin Parvo?' And so they raise such an uproar
that the squeak, squeak, squeak of the

'Devil among the tailors'

is hardly heard.

Then, in a partial lull, the voice of Lord Scamperdale rises, exclaiming,
'Oh, you hideous Hobgoblin, bull-and-mouth of a boy! you think, because I'm
a lord, and can't swear, or use coarse language--' And again the hubbub,
led on by the

'Devil among the tailors,'

drowns the exclamations of the speaker. It's that Pacey again; he's
accusing the virtuous Mr. Spraggon of handing his extra weight to Lord
Scamperdale; and Jack, in the full consciousness of injured guilt,
intimates that the blood of the Spraggons won't stand that--that there's
'only _one_ way of settling it, and he'll be ready for Pacey half an hour
after the race.'