bowling-green were, of course, the first places of search; but he was always just gone, or not come, or he was there yesterday, or he is expected to-morrow—a to-morrow which, as far as I am concerned, never arrives: the stars were against me. Then I directed my attention to his other acquirements, and once followed a ballad-singer half a mile, who turned out to be a strapping woman in a man’s great-coat; and another time pierced a whole mob of urchins to get at a capital Punch—when, behold, it was the genuine man of puppets, the true squeakery, “the real Simon Pure,” and Jack was as much to seek as ever.
At last I thought that I had actually caught him, and on his own peculiar field, the cricket-ground. We abound in rustic fun and good-humour, and, of course, in nicknames. A certain senior, of fifty or thereabout, for instance, of very juvenile habits and inclinations, who plays at ball and marbles and cricket with all the boys in the parish, and joins a kind, merry, buoyant heart to an aspect somewhat rough and care-worn, has no other appellation that ever I heard but Uncle. I don’t think, if by any strange chance he were called by it, that he would know his own name. On the other hand, a little stunted pragmatical urchin—son and heir of Dick Jones—an absolute old man cut shorter—so slow and stiff, and sturdy and wordy—
