Puffington's blue roans were well known about town, and were considered the handsomest horses of the day; quite equal to Barclay and Perkin's piebalds.
Old Puffington was not like a sportsman.

He was a little, soft, rosy, roundabout man, with stiff resolute legs that did not look as if they could be bent to a saddle.

He was great, however, in a gig, and slouched like a sack.
Mrs.Puffington, _nee_ Smith, was a tall handsome woman, who thought a good deal of herself.

When she and her spouse married, they lived close to the manufactory, in a sweet little villa replete with every elegance and convenience--a pond, which they called a lake--laburnums without end; a yew, clipped into a dock-tailed waggon-horse; standing for three horses and gigs, with an acre and half of land for a cow.
Old Puffington, however, being unable to keep those dearest documents of the British merchant, his balance-sheets, to himself, and Mrs.Puffington finding a considerable sum going to the 'good' every year, insisted, on the birth of their only child, our friend, upon migrating to the 'west,' as she called it, and at one bold stroke they established themselves in Heathcote Street, Mecklenburgh Square.

Novelists had not then written this part down as 'Mesopotamia,' and it was quite as genteel as Harley or Wimpole Street are now.