estimable man, and one with whom we have spent many a convivial evening,
was a great starch-maker at Stepney; and his mother was the daughter of an
eminent Worcestershire stone-china maker. Save such ludicrous hunts as they
might have seen on their brown jugs, we do not believe either of them had
any acquaintance whatever with the chase. Old Puffington was, however, what
a wise heir esteems a great deal more--an excellent man of business, and
amassed mountains of money. To see his establishment at Stepney, one would
think the whole world was going to be starched. Enormous dock-tailed
dray-horses emerged with ponderous waggons heaped up to the very skies,
while others would come rumbling in, laden with wheat, potatoes, and other
starch-making ingredients. Puffington's blue roans were well known about
town, and were considered the handsomest horses of the day; quite equal to
Barclay and Perkin's piebalds.

Old Puffington was not like a sportsman. He was a little, soft, rosy,
roundabout man, with stiff resolute legs that did not look as if they could
be bent to a saddle. He was great, however, in a gig, and slouched like a
sack.

Mrs. Puffington, _nee_ Smith, was a tall handsome woman, who thought a good
deal of herself. When she and her spouse married, they lived close to the
manufactory, in a sweet little villa replete with every elegance and
convenience--a pond, which they called a lake--laburnums without end; a
yew, clipped into a dock-tailed waggon-horse; standing for three horses and
gigs, with an acre and half of land for a cow.

Old Puffington, however, being unable to keep those dearest documents of
the British merchant, his balance-sheets, to himself, and Mrs. Puffington
finding a considerable sum going to the 'good' every year, insisted, on the
birth of their only child, our friend, upon migrating to the 'west,' as she
called it, and at one bold stroke they established themselves in Heathcote
Street, Mecklenburgh Square. Novelists had not then written this part down
as 'Mesopotamia,' and it was quite as genteel as Harley or Wimpole Street
are now. Their chief object then was to increase their wealth and make
their only son 'a gentleman.' They sent him to Eton, and in due time to
Christ Church, where, of course, he established a red coat to persecute Sir
Thomas Mostyn's and the Duke of Beaufort's hounds, much to the annoyance of
their respective huntsmen, Stephen Goodall and Philip Payne, and the
aggravation of