Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour

by Robert Smith Surtees

'I don't understand you,' replied Sponge, pretending astonishment.

'Lor bless us! why, where have you lived all your life?' asked Pacey.

'Oh, partly in one place, and partly in another,' was the answer.

'I should think so,' replied Pacey, with a look of compassion, adding, in an undertone, 'a good deal with your mother, I should think.'

'If you could get that horse at a moderate figure,' whispered Jack to his neighbour, and squinting his eyes inside out as he spoke, 'he's well worth having.'

'The beggar won't sell him,' muttered Pacey, who was fonder of talking about buying horses than of buying them.

'Oh yes, he will,' replied Jack; 'he didn't understand what you meant. Mr. Sponge,' said he, addressing himself slowly and distinctly up the table to our hero—'Mr. Sponge, my friend Mr. Pacey here challenges your chestnut.'

Sponge still stared in well-feigned astonishment.

'It's a custom we have in this country,' continued Jack, looking, as he thought, at Sponge, but, in reality, squinting most frightfully at the sideboard.