g of beer,
if the more you draw the more you don't make. Yesterday as ever was
was Saturday, and we drawed three pound ten and nine. What'll that
come to, Mr Vavasor, when you reckons it up with the brewer? Why,
it's a next to nothing. You knows that well enough."

"Upon my word I don't. But I know you don't sell a pint of beer
without getting a profit out of it."

"Lord love you, Mr Vavasor. If I hadn't nothink to look to but beer I
couldn't keep a house over my head; no I couldn't. That house of mine
belongs to Meux's people; and very good people they are too;--have
made a sight of money; haven't they, Mr Vavasor? I has to get my beer
from them in course. Why not, when it's their house? But if I sells
their stuff as I gets it, there ain't a halfpenny coming to me out of
a gallon. Look at that, now."

"But then you don't sell it as you get it. You stretch it."

"That's in course. I'm not going to tell you a lie, Mr Vavasor. You
know what's what as well as I do, and a sight better, I expect.
There's a dozen different ways of handling beer, Mr Vavasor. But
what's the use of that, when they can take four or five pounds a day
over the counter for their rot-gut stuff at the 'Cadogan Arms,' and I
can't do no better nor yet perhaps so well, for a real honest glass
of beer. Stretch it! It's my belief the more you poison their liquor,
the more the people likes it!"

Mr Grimes was a stout man, not very tall, with a mottled red face,
and large protruding eyes. As regards his own person, Mr Grimes
might have been taken as a fair sample of the English innkeeper,
as described for many years past. But in his outer garments he was
very unlike that description. He wore a black, swallow-tailed coat,
made, however, to set very loose upon his back, a black waistcoat,
and black pantaloons. He carried, moreover, in his hands a black
chimney-pot hat. Not only have the top-boots and breeches vanished
from the costume of innkeepers, but also the long, particoloured
waistcoat, and the birds'-eye fogle round their necks. They get
themselves up to look like Dissenting ministers or undertakers,
except that there is still a something about their rosy gills which
tells a tale of the spigot and corkscrew.

Mr Grimes had only just finished the tale of his own hard ways as a
publican, when the door-bell was again rung. "There's Scruby," said
George Vavasor, "and now we can go to business."

CHAPTER XIII

Mr Grimes Gets His Odd Money