cony of the Imperial Hotel, after
breakfast and before mounting for the day.

Spareneck.--'No, that's for Tuesday. He wouldn't stand one to-day. What do
you ride?'

Downley.--'Oh, I've a hack, one of Screwman's, Perpetual Motion they call
him, because he never gets any rest. That's him, I believe, with the
lofty-actioned hind-legs,' added he, pointing to a weedy string-halty bay
passing below, high in bone and low in flesh.

'Who's o' the gaudy chestnut?' asked Caingey Thornton, who now appeared,
wiping his fat lips after his second glass of _eau de vie_.

'That's Mr. Sponge's,' replied Spareneck in a low tone, knowing how soon a
man catches his own name.

'A deuced fine horse he is, too,' observed Caingey, in a louder key;
adding, 'Sponge has the finest lot of horses of any man in England--in the
world, I may say.'

Mr. Sponge himself now rose from the breakfast table, and was speedily
followed by Mr. Waffles and the rest of the party, some bearing
sofa-pillows and cushions to place on the balustrades, to loll at their
ease, in imitation of the Coventry Club swells in Piccadilly. Then our
friends smoked their cigars, reviewed the cavalry, and criticised the
ladies who passed below in the flys on their way to the meet.

'Come, old Bolter!' exclaimed one, 'here's Miss Bussington coming to look
after you--got her mamma with her, too--so you may as well knock under at
once, for she's determined to have you.'

'A devil of a woman the old un is, too,' observed Ensign Downley; 'she
nearly frightened Jack Simpers of ours into fits, by asking what he meant
after dancing three dances with her daughter one night.'

'My word, but Miss Jumpheavy must expect to do some execution to-day with
that fine floating feather and her crimson satin dress and ermine,'
observed Mr. Waffles, as that estimable lady drove past in her Victoria
phaeton. 'She looks like the Queen of Sheba herself. But come, I suppose,'
he added, taking a most diminutive Geneva watch out of his
waistcoat-pocket, 'we should be going. See! there's your nag kicking up a
shindy,' he said to Caingey Thornton, as the redoubtable brown was led down
the street by a jean-jacketed groom, kicking and lashing out at everything
he came near.

'I'll kick him,' observed Thornton, retiring from the balcony to the
brandy-bottle, and helping himself to a pretty good-sized glass. He then
extricated his large cutting whip from the confusion of whips with which
it was mixed, a