‘Coldish, tonight,’ said he, stooping and placing both hands to the bars. ‘Coldish,’ repeated he, rubbing his hands and looking around.

‘It generally is about this time of year, I think,’ observed Miss Glitters, who was quite ready to enter for our friend.

‘Hope it won’t stop hunting,’ said Mr Sponge.

‘Hope not,’ replied Sir Harry; ‘would be a bore if it did.’

‘I wonder you gentlemen don’t prefer hunting in a frost,’ observed Miss Howard; ‘one would think it would be just the time you’d want a good warming.’

‘I don’t agree with you, there,’ replied Mr Sponge, looking at her, and thinking she was not nearly so pretty as Miss Glitters.

‘Do you hunt tomorrow?’ asked he of Sir Harry, not having been able to obtain any information at the stables.

‘(Hiccup) tomorrow? Oh, I dare say we shall,’ replied Sir Harry, who kept his hounds as he did his carriages, to be used when wanted. ‘Dare say we shall,’ repeated he.

But though Sir Harry spoke thus encouragingly of their prospects, he took no steps, as far as Mr Sponge could learn, to carry out the design. Indeed, the subject of hunting was never once mentioned, the conversation after dinner, instead of being about the Quorn, or the Pytchley, or Jack Thompson with the Atherstone, turning upon the elegance and lighting of the Casinos in the Adelaide Gallery and Windmill Street, and the relative merits of those establishments over the Casino de Venise in High Holborn. Nor did morning produce any change for the better, for Sir Harry and all the captains came down in their usual flashy broken-down player-looking attire, their whole thoughts being absorbed in arranging for a pool at billiards, in which the ladies took part. So with billiards, brandy, and ‘ ’baccy,’ -- ‘ ’baccy,’ brandy, and billiards, varied with an occasional stroll about the grounds, the non-sporting inmates of Nonsuch House beguiled the time, much to Mr Sponge’s disgust, whose soul was on fire and eager for the fray. The reader’s perhaps being the same, we will skip Christmas and pass on to New Year’s Day.

’Twere almost superfluous to say that New Year’s Day is always a great holiday. It is a day on which custom commands people to be happy and idle, whether they have the means of being happy and idle or not. It is a day for which happiness and idleness are ‘booked,’ and parties are planned and arranged long beforehand. Some go to the town, some to the country; some take rail some take steam; some take greyhounds; some take gigs; while others take guns and pop at all the little dickey-birds that come in their way. The rural population generally incline to a hunt. They are not very particular as to style, so long as there are a certain number of hounds, and some men in scarlet, to blow their horns, halloo, and crack their whips.

The population, especially the rising population about Nonsuch House, all inclined that way. A New Year’s Day’s hunt with Sir Harry had long been looked forward to by the little Raws, and the little Spooneys, and the big and little Cheeks, and we don’t know how many others. Nay, it had been talked of by the elder boys at their respective schools -- we beg pardon, academies -- Doctor Switchington’s, Mr Latherington’s, Mrs Skelpers, and a liberal allowance of boasting indulged in, as to how they would show each other the way over the hedges and ditches. The thing had long been talked of. Old Johnny Raw had asked Sir Harry to arrange the day so long ago, that Sir Harry had forgotten all about it. Sir Harry was one of those good-natured souls who can’t say ‘No’ to anyone. If anybody had asked if they might set fire to his house, he would have said,

‘Oh, (hiccup) certainly, my dear (hiccup) fellow, if it will give you any (hiccup) pleasure.’