Others--the sock-and-buskin ones--were a made-up, wigged,
and padded set. Bugles was resplendent. He had on a dress scarlet coat,
lined and faced with yellow satin (one of the properties, we believe, of
the Victoria), a beautifully worked pink shirt-front, a pitch-plaster
coloured waistcoat, white ducks, and jack-boots, with brass heel spurs. He
carried his whip in the arm's-length-way of a circus master following a
horse. Some dozen of these curiosities were staggering, and swaggering, and
smoking in front of Nonsuch House, to the edification of a lot of gaping
grooms and chawbacons, when Mr. Sponge cantered becomingly up on the
piebald. Lady Scattercash, with several elegantly dressed females, all with
cigars in their mouths, were conversing with them from the open
drawing-room windows above, while sundry good-looking damsels ogled them
from the attics above. Such was the tableau that presented itself to Mr.
Sponge as he cantered round the turn that brought him in front of the
Elizabethan mansion of Nonsuch House.
Sir Harry, who was still rather drunk, thinking that every person there
must be either one of his party, or a friend of one of his party, or a
neighbour, or some one that he had seen before, reeled up to our friend as
he stopped, and, shaking him heartily by the hand, asked him to come in and
have something to eat.
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