‘Why, no, not so much as if they went out,’ replied our friend, thinking Mrs Jog was the one to side with.

‘Then you’d better (puff, wheeze, gasp) eat them between you,’ replied Jog, getting up and strutting out of the room.

Presently he appeared in front of the house, crowned in a pea-green wide-awake, with a half-finished gibbey in his hand; and as Mr Sponge did not want to offend him, and moreover wanted to get his horses billeted on him, he presently made an excuse for joining him.

Although his horses were standing ‘free gratis,’ as he called it, at Mr Puffington’s, and though he would have thought nothing of making Mr Leather come over with one each hunting morning, still he felt that if the hounds were much on the other side of Puddingpote Bower, it would not be so convenient as having them there. Despite the egg controversy, he thought a judicious application of soft sauder might accomplish what he wanted. At all events, he would try.

Jog had brought himself short up, and was standing glowering with his hands in his coat-pockets, as if he had never seen the place before.

‘Pretty look-out you have here, Mr Jogglebury,’ observed Mr Sponge, joining him.

‘Very,’ replied Jog, still cogitating the egg question, and thinking he wouldn’t have so many boiled the next day.

‘All yours?’ asked Sponge, waving his hand as he spoke.

‘My (puff) ter--ri--tory goes up to those (wheeze) firs in the grass field on the hill,’ replied Jogglebury, pompously.

‘Indeed,’ said Mr Sponge, ‘they are fine trees;’ thinking what a finish they would make for a steeplechase.

‘My (puff) uncle, Crowdey, planted those (wheeze) trees,’ observed Jog. ‘I observe,’ added he, ‘that it is easier to cut down a (puff) tree than to make it (wheeze) again.’

‘I believe you’re right,’ replied Mr Sponge; ‘that idea has struck me very often.’

‘Has it?’ replied Jog, puffing voluminously into his frill.

Then they advanced a few paces, and, leaning on the iron hurdles, commenced staring at the cows.

‘Where are the stables?’ at last asked Sponge, seeing no inclination to move on the part of his host.

‘Stables (wheeze) -- stables (puff),’ replied Jogglebury, recollecting Sponge’s previous day’s proposal -- ‘stables (wheeze) are behind,’ said he, ‘at the back there (puff); nothin’ to see at them (wheeze).’

‘There’ll be the horse you drove yesterday; won’t you go to see how he is?’ asked Mr Sponge.

‘Oh, sure to be well (puff); never nothing the matter with him (wheeze),’ replied Jogglebury.

‘May as well see,’ rejoined Mr Sponge, turning up a narrow walk that seemed to lead to the back.

Jog followed doggedly. He had a good deal of John Bull in him, and did not fancy being taken possession of in that sort of way; and thought, moreover, that Mr Sponge had not behaved very well in the matter of the egg controversy.

The stables certainly were nothing to boast of. They were in an old rubble-stone, red-tiled building, without even the delicacy of a ceiling. Nevertheless, there was plenty of room even after Jogglebury had cut off one end for a cow-house.