society of his lovely and accomplished daughters. Hunting was all very well
occasionally, but it did not do to make a business of it. This, however, he
kept to himself.

'You'll have a fine day, my dear Mr. Sponge,' said he, extending a hand, as
he found our friend brown-booted and red-coated, working away at the
breakfast.

'Yes,' said Sponge, munching away for hard life. In less than ten minutes,
he managed to get as much down as, with the aid of a knotch of bread that
he pocketed, he thought would last him through the day; and, with a hasty
adieu, he hurried off to find the stables, to get his hack. The piebald was
saddled, bridled, and turned round in the stall; for all servants that are
worth anything like to further hunting operations. With the aid of the
groom's instructions, who accompanied him out of the courtyard, Sponge was
enabled to set off at a hard canter, cheered by the groom's observation,
that 'he thought he would be there in time.' On, on he went; now
speculating on a turn; now pulling a scratch map he had made on a bit of
paper out of his waistcoat-pocket; now inquiring the name of any place he
saw of any person he met. So he proceeded for five or six miles without
much difficulty; the road, though not all turnpike, being mainly over good
sound township ones, It was at the village of Swineley, with its
chubby-towered church and miserable hut-like cottages, that his troubles
were to begin. He had two sharp turns to make--to ride through a
straw-yard, and leap over a broken-down wall at the corner of a cottage--to
get into Swaithing Green Lane, and so cut off an angle of two miles. The
road then became a bridle one, and was, like all bridle ones, very plain to
those who know them, and very puzzling to those who don't. It was evidently
a little-frequented road; and what with looking out for footmarks (now
nearly obliterated by the recent rains) and speculating on what queer
corners of the fields the gates would be in, Mr. Sponge found it necessary
to reduce his pace to a very moderate trot. Still he had made good way; and
supposing they gave a quarter-of-an-hour's law, and he had not been
deceived as to distance, he thought he should get to the meet about the
time. His horse, too, would be there, and perhaps Lord Scamperdale might
give a little extra law on that account. He then began speculating on what
sort of a man his lordship was, and the probable nature of his reception.
He began to wish that Jawl