The Pennies And
Fourpenny Bits - There Were Fourpenny Bits In Those Days - That Went Behind
That Two-Foot Window, Goodness!
There was no end.
Job used to chink them
in a pint pot sometimes before the company, to give them an idea of his
great hoards. He always tried to impress people with his wealth, and
would talk of a fifty-pound contract as if it was nothing to him. Jumbles
are eternal, if nothing else is. I thought then there was not such
another shop as Job's in the universe. I have found since that there is a
Job shop in every village, and in every street in every town - that is to
say, a window for jumbles and rubbish; and if you don't know it, you may
be quite sure your children do, and spend many a sly penny there. Be as
rich as you may, and give them gilded sweetmeats at home, still they will
slip round to the Job shop.
It was a pretty cottage, well backed with trees and bushes, with a
south-east mixture of sunlight and shade, and little touches that cannot
be suggested by writing. Job had not got the Semitic instinct of keeping.
The art of acquisition he possessed to some extent, that was his right
hand; but somehow the half-crowns slipped away through his unstable left
hand, and fortune was a greasy pole to him. His left hand was too cunning
for him, it wanted to manage things too cleverly. If it had only had the
Semitic grip, digging the nails into the flesh to hold tight each
separate coin, he would have been village rich. The great secret is the
keeping. Finding is by no means keeping. Job did not flourish in his old
days; the people changed round about. Job is gone, and I think every one
of that cottage is either dead or moved. Empty.
The next cottage was the water-bailiffs, who looked after the great pond
or 'broad'. There were one or two old boats, and he used to leave the
oars leaning against a wall at the side of the house. These oars looked
like fragments of a wreck, broken and irregular. The right-hand scull was
heavy, as if made of ironwood, the blade broad and spoon-shaped, so as to
have a most powerful grip of the water. The left-hand scull was light and
slender, with a narrow blade like a marrow scoop; so when you had the
punt, you had to pull very hard with your left hand and gently with the
right to get the forces equal. The punt had a list of its own, and no
matter how you roved, it would still make leeway. Those who did not know
its character were perpetually trying to get this crooked wake straight,
and consequently went round and round exactly like the whirligig beetle.
Those who knew used to let the leeway proceed a good way and then alter
it, so as to act in the other direction like an elongated zigzag.
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