Wish she hadn't run off (puff); 'would like to have had
a little more talk with her' (whiff, puff). 'Women never look so well as
when one comes in wet and dirty from hunting' (puff). He then sank
silently back in the easy-chair and whiffed and puffed all sorts of
fantastic clouds and columns and corkscrews at his leisure. The cigar being
finished, and the water in the foot-bath beginning to get cool, he emptied
the remainder of the hot into it, and lighting a fresh cigar, began
speculating on how the match was to be accomplished.

The lady was safe, that was clear; he had nothing to do but 'pop.' That he
would do in the evening, or in the morning, or any time--a man living in
the house with a girl need never be in want of an opportunity. That
preliminary over, and the usual answer 'Ask papa' obtained, then came the
question, how was the old boy to be managed?--for men with marriageable
daughters are to all intents and purposes 'old boys,' be their ages what
they may.

He became lost in reflection. He sat with his eyes fixed on the Jawleyford
portrait above the mantelpiece, wondering whether he was the amiable,
liberal, hearty, disinterested sort of man he appeared to be, indifferent
about money, and only wanting unexceptionable young men for his daughters;
or if he was a worldly minded man, like some he had met, who, after giving
him every possible encouragement, sent him to the right-about like a
servant. So Sponge smoked and thought, and thought and smoked, till the
water in the foot-bath again getting cold, and the shades of night drawing
on, he at last started up like a man determined to awake himself, and
poking a match into the fire, lighted the candles on the toilet-table, and
proceeded to adorn himself. Having again got himself into the killing
tights and buckled pumps, with a fine flower-fronted shirt, ere he embarked
on the delicacies and difficulties of the starcher, he stirred the little
pittance of a fire, and, folding himself in his dressing-gown, endeavoured
to prepare his mind for the calm consideration of all the minute bearings
of the question by a little more _Mogg_. In idea he transferred himself to
London, now fancying himself standing at the end of Burlington Arcade,
hailing a Fulham or Turnham Green 'bus; now wrangling with a conductor for
charging him sixpence when there was a pennant flapping at his nose with
the words "ALL THE WAY 3D." upon it; now folding the wooden doors
of a hansom cab in Ox