aking Orders.

Tying the legs of the birds together with a piece of string, Spriggs
proudly carried them along, dangling at his fingers' ends.

After tramping for a long mile, the friends at length discovered, what
they termed, an house of "hentertainment."

Entering a parlour, with a clean, sanded floor, (prettily herring-boned,
as the housemaids technically phrase it,) furnished with red curtains,
half a dozen beech chairs, three cast-iron spittoons, and a beer-bleached
mahogany table,--Spriggs tugged at the bell. The host, with a rotund,
smiling face, his nose, like Bardolph's, blazing with fiery meteors, and
a short, white apron, concealing his unmentionables, quickly answered the
tintinabulary summons.

"Landlord," said Spriggs, who had seated himself in a chair, while Mr.
Richard was adjusting his starched collar at the window;--"Landlord! ve
should like to have this 'ere game dressed."

The Landlord eyed the 'game' through his spectacles, and smiled.

"Roasted, or biled, Sir?" demanded he.

"Biled?--no:--roasted, to be sure!" replied Spriggs, amazed at his
pretended obtuseness: "and, I say, landlord, you can let us have plenty
o' nice wedgetables."

"Greens?" said the host;--but whether alluding to the verdant character
of his guests, or merely making a polite inquiry as to the article they
desired, it was impossible, from his tone and manner, to divine.

"Greens!" echoed Spriggs, indignantly; "no:--peas and 'taters."

"Directly, Sir," replied the landlord; and taking charge of the two
leetle birds, he departed, to prepare them for the table.

"Vot a rum cove that 'ere is," said Grubb.

"Double stout, eh?" said Spriggs, and then they both fell to a-laughing;
and certain it is, that, although the artist has only given us a draught
of the landlord, he was a subject sufficient for a butt!

"Vell! I must, say," said Grubb, stretching his weary legs under the
mahogany, "I never did spend sich a pleasant day afore--never!"

"Nor I," chimed in Spriggs, "and many a day ven I'm a chopping up the
'lump' shall I think on it. It's ralely bin a hout and houter! Lauk!
how Suke vill open her heyes, to be sure, ven I inform her how ve've bin
out with two real guns, and kill'd our own dinner. I'm bless'd if she'll
swallow it!"

"I must say ve have seen a little life," said Grubb.

"And death too," added Spriggs. "Vitness the pig!"

"Now don't!" remonstrated Grubb, who was rather sore upon this part of