“Oh!  I live in Cheshire—­Mainwaring’s country, but Melton’s the place I chiefly hunt at,—­know all the fellows there; rare set of dogs, to be sure,—­only country worth hunting in, to my mind.”

Jorrocks.  Rigler swells, though, the chaps, arn’t they?  Recollect one swell of a fellow coming with his upper lip all over fur into our country, thinking to astonish our weak minds, but I reckon we told him out.

Stranger.  What! you hunt, do you?

Jorrocks.  A few—­you’ve perhaps heard tell of the Surrey ’unt?

Stranger.  Cocktail affair, isn’t it?

Jorrocks.  No such thing, I assure you.  Cocktail indeed!  I likes that.

Stranger.  Well, but it’s not what we calls a fast-coach.

Jorrocks.  I doesn’t know wot you calls a fast-coach, but if you’ve a mind to make a match, I’ll bet you a hat, ay, or half a dozen hats, that I’ll find a fellow to take the conceit out o’ any your Meltonians.

Stranger.  Oh!  I don’t doubt but you have some good men among you; I’m sure I didn’t mean anything offensive, by asking if it was a cocktail affair, but we Meltonians certainly have a trick, I must confess, of running every other country down; come, sir, I’ll drink the Surrey hunt with all my heart, said he, swigging off the remains of a glass of brandy-and-water which the waiter had brought him shortly after entering.

Jorrocks.  Thank you, sir, kindly.  Waiter, bring me a bottom o’ brandy, cold, without—­and don’t stint for quantity, if you please.  Doesn’t you think these inns werry expensive places, sir?  I doesn’t mean this in particular, but inns in general.

Stranger.  Oh!  I don’t know, sir.  We must expect to pay.  “Live and let live,” is my motto.  I always pay my inn bills without looking them over.  Just cast my eyes at the bottom to see the amount, then call for pen and ink, add so much for waiter, so much for chambermaid, so much for boots, and if I’m travelling in my own carriage so much for the ostler for greasing.  That’s the way I do business, sir.

Jorrocks.  Well, sir, a werry pleasant plan too, especially for the innkeeper—­and all werry right for a gentleman of fortune like you.  My motto, however, is “Waste not, want not,” and my wife’s father’s motto was “Wilful waste brings woeful want,” and I likes to have my money’s worth.—­Now, said he, pulling out a handful of bills, at some places that I go to they charges me six shillings a day for my dinner, and when I was ill and couldn’t digest nothing but the lightest and plainest of breakfasts, when a fork breakfast in fact would have made a stiff ’un of me, and my muffin mill was almost stopped, they charged me two shillings for one cake, and sixpence for two eggs.—­Now I’m in the tea trade myself, you must know, and I contend that as things go, or at least as things went before the Barbarian eye, as they call Napier, kicked up a row with the Hong merchants, it’s altogether a shameful imposition, and I wonder people put up with it.