Hark! there’s a row below the stand, and Viney is seen in a state of excitement enquiring for Mr Washball. Pacey has objected to a gentleman rider, and Guano and Puffington have differed on the point. A nice, slim, well-put-on lad (Buckram’s roughrider) has come to the scales and claimed to be allowed 3 lbs. as the Honourable Captain Boville. Finding the point questioned, he abandons the ‘handle,’ and sinks into plain Captain Boville. Pacey now objects to him altogether.

‘S--c--e--u--s--e me, sir; s--c--e--u--s--e me, sir,’ simpers our friend Dick Bragg, sidling up to the objector with a sort of tendency of his turn-back-wristed hand to his hat. ‘S--c--e--u--s--e me, sir; s--c--e--u--s--e me,’ repeats he, ‘but I think you was wrong, sir, in objecting to Captain Boville, sir, as a gen’l’man rider, sir.’

‘Why?’ demands Pacey, in the full flush of victory.

‘Oh, sir -- because, sir -- in fact, sir -- he is a gen’l’man, sir.’

‘Is a gentleman! How do you know?’ demands Pacey, in the same tone as before.

‘Oh, sir, he’s a gen’l’man -- an undoubted gen’l’man. Everything about him shows that. Does nothing -- breeches by Anderson -- boots by Bartley; besides which, he drinks wine every day, and has a whole box of cigars in his bedroom. But don’t take my word for it, pray,’ continued Bragg, seeing Pacey was wavering; don’t take my word for it, pray. There’s a gen’l’man, a countryman of his somewhere about,’ added he, looking anxiously into the surrounding crowd -- ‘there’s a gen’l’man, a countryman of his somewhere about, if we could but find him,’ Bragg standing on his tiptoes, and exclaiming, ‘Mr Buckram! Mr Buckram! Has anybody seen anything of Mr Buckram!’

‘Here!’ replied a meek voice from behind; upon which there was an elbowing through the crowd, and presently a most respectable, rosy-gilled, grey-haired hawbuck-looking man, attired in a new brown cut- away, with bright buttons and a velvet collar, with a buff waistcoat, came twirling an ash-stick in one hand, and fumbling the silver in his drab trousers’ pocket with the other, in front of the bystanders.

‘Oh! ’ere he is!’ exclaimed Bragg, appealing to the stranger with a hasty ‘You know Captain Boville, don’t you?’

‘Why, now, as to the matter of that,’ replied the gentleman, gathering all the loose silver up into his hand, and speaking very slowly, just as a country gentleman, who has all the livelong day to do nothing in, may be supposed to speak -- ‘Why, now, as to the matter of that,’ said he, eyeing Pacey intently, and beginning to drop the silver slowly as he spoke, ‘I can’t say that I’ve any very ’ticklar ’quaintance with the captin. I knows him, in course, just as one knows a neighbour’s son. The captin’s a good deal younger nor me,’ continued he, raising his new eight-and-sixpenny Parisian, as if to show his sandy grey hair. ‘I’m a’most sixty; and he, I dare say, is little more nor twenty,’ dropping a half-crown as he said it. ‘But the captin’s a nice young gent -- a nice young gent, without any blandishment, I should say; and that’s more nor one can say of all young gents nowadays,’ said Buckram, looking at Pacey as he spoke, and dropping two consecutive half-crowns.

‘Why, but you live near him, don’t you?’ interrupted Bragg.

‘Near him,’ repeated Buckram, feeling his well-shaven chin thoughtfully. ‘Why, yes -- that’s to say, near his dad. The fact is,’ continued he, ‘I’ve a little independence of my own,’ dropping a heavy five-shilling piece as he said it, ‘and his father -- old Bo, as I call him -- adjoins me; and if either of us ’appen to have a battue, or a ’aunch of wenzun, and a few friends, we inwite each other, and wicey wersey, you know,’ letting off a lot of shillings and sixpences. And just at the moment the blind fiddler struck up ‘The Devil among the Tailors,’ when the shouts and laughter of the mob closed the scene.