Is this the man you mean?
I am sitting in Sam's "den" at Clere. He is engaged in receiving the "afterdavy" of a man who got his head broke by a tinker at the cricket-match in the park (for Sam is in the commission, and sits on the bench once a month "a perfect Midas," as Mrs. Wattlegum would say). I am busy rigging up one of these wonderful new Yankee spoons with a view to killing a villanous pike, who has got into the troutwater. I have just tied on the thirty-ninth hook, and have got the fortieth ready in my fingers, when a footman opens the door, and says to me,—
"If you please, sir, your stud-groom would be glad to see you."
I keep two horses of all work and a grey pony, so that the word "stud" before the word groom in the last sentence must be taken to refer to my little farm, on which I rear a few colts annually.
"May he come in, Sam?" I ask.
"Of course! uncle Jeff," says he.
And so there comes in a little old man, dressed in the extreme of that peculiar dandyism which is affected by retired jockeys and trainers, and which I have seen since attempted, with indifferent success, by a few young gentlemen at our great universities. He stands in the door and says,—
"Mr. Plowden has offered forty pound for the dark chestnut colt, sir."
"Dick," I say (mark that, if you please) "Dick, I think he may have the brute."
And so, my dear reader, I must at last bid you heartily farewell. I am not entirely without hope that we may meet again.