nothin', sir, them parish cripples." Wherewith the
worthy sexton took his way with a battered tin can to get his "fours"
at the Feathers. He did not patronise the Duke's Head. It was too
new-fangled for him, and he suspected his arch enemy, Mr. Abraham Boosey,
of putting a rat or two into the old beer to make it "draw," which
accounted for its being so "hard." But Mr. Abraham Boosey was the
undertaker, and he, Thomas Reid, was the sexton, and it did not do to
express these views too loudly, lest perchance Mr. Boosey should, just in
his play, construct a coffin or two just too big for the regulation
grave, and thereby leave Mr. Reid in the lurch. For the undertaker and
the gravedigger are as necessary to each other, as Mr. Reid maintained,
as a pair of blackbirds in a hedge.

But the spring was "forrard t'year" and the weather was consequently even
more detestable than usual at that season. The roads were heavy. The rain
seemed never weary of pouring down and the wind never tired of blowing.
The wet and leafless creepers beat against the walls of the cottage, and
the chimneys smoked both there and at the vicarage. The rooms were
pervaded with a disagreeable smell of damp coal smoke, and the fires
struggled desperately to burn against the overwhelming odds of rain and
wind which came down the chimneys. Mrs. Goddard never remembered to have
been so uncomfortable during the two previous winters she had spent in
Billingsfield, and even Nellie grew impatient and petulant. The only
bright spot in those long days seemed to be made by the regular visits of
Mr. Juxon, by the equally regular bi-weekly appearance of the Ambroses
when they came to tea, and by the little dinners at the vicarage. The
weather had grown so wet and the roads so bad that on these latter
occasions the vicar sent his dogcart with Reynolds and the old mare,
Strawberry, to fetch his two guests. Even Mr. Juxon, who always walked
when he could, had got into the habit of driving down to the cottage
in a strange-looking gig which he had imported from America, and which,
among all the many possessions of the squire, alone attracted the
unfavourable comment of his butler. He would have preferred to see a good
English dogcart, high in the seat and wheels, at the door of the Hall,
instead of that outlandish vehicle; but Joseph Ruggles, the groom,
explained to him that it was easier to clean than a dogcart, and that
when it rained he sat inside with the squire.

On a