Pacey is now going to what he calls 'compare'—see that he has got his bets booked right; and, throwing his right leg over his cob's neck, he blobs on to the ground; and, leaving the pony to take care of itself, disappears in the crowd.
What a hubbub! what roarings, and shoutings, and recognizings! 'Bless my heart! who'd have thought of seeing you?' and, 'By jingo! what's sent you here?'
'My dear Waffles,' cries Jawleyford, rushing up to our Laverick Wells friend (who is looking very debauched), 'I'm overjoyed to see you. Do come upstairs and see Mrs. Jawleyford and the dear girls. It was only last night we were talking about you.' And so Jawleyford hurries Mr. Waffles off, just as Waffles is in extremis about his horse.
Looking around the scene there seems to be everybody that we have had the pleasure of introducing to the reader in the course of Mr. Sponge's Tour. Mr. and Mrs. Springwheat in their dog-cart, Mrs. Springey's figure looking as though 'wheat had got above forty, my lord'; old Jog and his handsome wife in the ugly old phaeton, well garnished with children, and a couple of sticks in the rough peeping out of the apron, Gustavus James held up in his mother's arms, with the curly blue feather nodding over his nose. There is also Farmer Peastraw, and faces that a patient inspection enables us to appropriate to Dribble, and Hook, and Capon, and Calcot, and Lumpleg, and Crane of Crane Hall, and Charley Slapp of red-coat times—people look so different in plain clothes to what they do in hunting ones. Here, too, is George Cheek, running down with perspiration, having run over from Dr. Latherington's, for which he will most likely 'catch it' when he gets back; and oh, wonder of wonders, here's Robert Foozle himself!
'Well, Robert, you've come to the steeple-chase?'
'Yes, I've come to the steeple-chase.'
'Are you fond of steeple-chases?'
'Yes, I'm fond of steeple-chases.'
'I dare say you never were at one before,' observes his mother.
'No, I never was at one before,' replies Robert.