Jog rejoined that he was 'sure to
break his neck'--breaking their necks being, as she conceived, the
inevitable end of fox-hunters. Jog, who had not prosecuted the sport of
hunting long enough to be able to gainsay her assertion, though he took
especial care to defer the operation of breaking his own neck as long as he
could, fell back upon the expense and inconvenience of keeping Mr. Sponge
and his three horses, and his saucy servant, who had taught their domestics
to turn up their noses at his diet table; above all, at his stick-jaw and
undeniable small-beer. So they went fighting and squabbling on, till at
last the scene ended, as usual, by Mrs. Jogglebury bursting into tears, and
declaring that Jog didn't care a farthing either for her or her children.
Jog then bundled off, to try and fashion a most incorrigible-looking,
knotty blackthorn into a head of Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst. He afterwards
took a turn at a hazel that he thought would make a Joe Hume. Having
occupied himself with these till the children's dinner-hour, he took a
wandering, snatching sort of meal, and then put on his paletot, with a
little hatchet in the pocket, and went off in search of the raw material in
his own and the neighbouring hedges.
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