‘I’ll play him for what he likes!’ exclaimed the cool, coatless Captain Macer, striking his ball away for a cannon.

‘Hang your play!’ replied Spareneck; ‘you’re always thinking of play -- it’s hunting I’m talking of,’ bringing his heavy, silver-mounted jockey-whip a crack down his leg.

‘You don’t say so!’ exclaimed Sam Shortcut, who had been flattered into riding rather harder than he liked, and feared his pluck might be put to the test.

‘What a ruffian!’ -- (puff) -- observed Mr Waffles, taking his cigar from his mouth as he sat on the bench, dressed as a racket-player, looking on at the game, ‘he shalln’t ride roughshod over us.’

‘That he shalln’t!’ exclaimed Caingey Thornton, Mr Waffles’s premier toady, and constant trencherman.

‘I’ll ride him!’ rejoined Mr Spareneck, jockeying his arms, and flourishing his whip as if he was at work, adding: ‘his old brandy-nosed, frosty-whiskered trumpeter of a groom says he’s coming down by the five o’clock train. I vote we go and meet him -- invite him to a steeplechase by moonlight.’

‘I vote we go and see him, at all events,’ observed Frank Hoppey, laying down his cue and putting on his coat, adding, ‘I should like to see a man bold enough to heard a whole hunt -- especially such a hunt as ours.’

‘Finish the game first,’ observed Captain Macer, who had rather the best of it.

‘No, leave the balls as they are till we come back,’ rejoined Ned Stringer; ‘we shall be late. See, it’s only ten to, now,’ continued he, pointing to the timepiece above the fire; whereupon there was a putting away of cues, hurrying on of coats, seeking of hats, sorting of sticks, and a general desertion of the room for the railway station.