‘No, my angel, not a ’ung man yet,’ replied Mrs Jogglebury, taking him out of the chair, and hugging him to her bosom.

‘He’ll be a man before his mother for all that,’ observed Mr Sponge, nothing disconcerted by the noise.

Jog had now finished his breakfast, and having pocketed three buns and two pieces of toast, with a thick layer of cold ham between them, looked at his great warming-pan of a watch, and said to his guest, ‘When you’re (wheeze), I’m (puff).’ So saying, he got up, and gave his great legs one or two convulsive shakes, as if to see that they were on.

Mrs Jogglebury looked reproachfully at him, as much as to say, ‘How can you behave so?’

Mr Sponge, as he eyed Jog’s ill-made, queerly put on garments, wished that he had not desired Leather to go to the meet. It would have been better to have got the horses a little way off, and have shirked Jog, who did not look like a desirable introducer to a hunting field.

‘I’ll be with you directly,’ replied Mr Sponge, gulping down the remains of his tea; adding, ‘I’ve just got to run upstairs and get a cigar.’ So saying, he jumped up and disappeared.

Murry Ann, not approving of Sponge’s smoking in his bedroom, had hid the cigar-case under the toilet cover, at the back of the glass, and it was some time before he found it.

Mrs Jogglebury availed herself of the lapse of time, and his absence, to pacify her young Turk, and try to coax him into reciting the marvellous ‘Obin and Ichard.’

As Mr Sponge came clanking downstairs with the cigar-case in his hand, she met him (accidentally, of course) at the bottom, with the boy in her arms, and exclaimed, ‘O Mr Sponge, here’s Gustavus James wants to tell you a little story.’

Mr Sponge stopped -- inwardly hoping that it would not be a long one.

‘Now, my darling,’ said she, sticking the boy up straight to get him to begin.

‘Now then!’ exclaimed Mr Crowdey, in the true Jehu-like style, from the vehicle at the door, in which he had composed himself.

‘Coming, Jog! coming!’ replied Mrs Crowdey, with a frown on her brow at the untimely interruption; then appealing again to the child, who was nestling in his mother’s bosom, as if disinclined to show off, she said, ‘Now, my darling, let the gentleman hear how nicely you’ll say it.’

The child still slunk.

‘That’s a fine fellow, out with it!’ said Mr Sponge, taking up his hat to be off.

‘Now then!’ exclaimed his host again.

‘Coming!’ replied Mr Sponge.

As if to thwart him, the child then began, Mrs Jogglebury holding up her forefinger as well in admiration as to keep silence:

‘Obin and Ichard, two pretty men,
Lay in bed till ’e clock struck ten;

Up starts Obin, and looks at the sky --’

And then the brat stopped.