e, with the gaiety of a man in his
Sunday's best, bound on a holiday trip. 'Now for the silver specs!'
repeated he.

'Ah, true,' replied his lordship; 'I'd forgot the specs.' (He hadn't, only
he thought his silver-mounted ones would be safer in his keeping than in
Jack's.) 'I'd forgot the specs. However, never mind, you shall have these,'
said he, taking his tortoise-shell-rimmed ones off his nose and handing
them to Jack.

[Illustration: MR. SPRAGGON'S EMBASSY TO JAWLEYFORD COURT]

'You promised me the silver ones,' observed our friend Jack, who wanted to
be smart.

'Did I?' replied his lordship; 'I declare I'd forgot. Ah yes, I believe I
did,' added he, with an air of sudden enlightenment--'the pair upstairs;
but how the deuce to get at them I don't know, for the key of the Indian
cabinet is locked in the old oak press in the still-room, and the key of
the still-room is locked away in the linen-press in the green lumber-room
at the top of the house, and the key of the green lumber-room is in a
drawer at the bottom of the wardrobe in the Star-Chamber, and the--'

'Ah, well; never mind,' grunted Jack, interrupting the labyrinth of lies.
'I dare say these will do--I dare say these will do,' putting them on;
adding, 'Now, if you'll lend me a shawl for my neck, and a mackintosh, my
name shall be _Walker_.'

'Better make it _Trotter_,' replied his lordship, 'considering the distance
you have to go.'

'Good,' said Jack, mounting and driving away.

'It will be a blessing if we get there,' observed Jack to the liveried
stable-lad, as the old bag of bones of a mare went hitching and limping
away.

'Oh, she can go when she's warm,' replied the lad, taking her across the
ears with the point of the whip. The wheels followed merrily over the
sound, hard road through the park, and the gentle though almost
imperceptible fall of the ground giving an impetus to the vehicle, they
bowled away as if they had four of the soundest, freshest legs in the world
before them, instead of nothing but a belly-band between them and eternity.

When, however, they cleared the noble lodge and got upon the unscraped mud
of the Deepdebt turnpike, the pace soon slackened, and, instead of the gig
running away with the old mare, she was fairly brought to her collar. Being
a game one, however, she struggled on with a trot, till at length, turning
up the deeply spurlinged, clayey bottomed cross-road between Rookgate and
Clamley, it was all she cou