Tea Was Usually At Half-Past Three, And It Is A
Fact That Many Well-To-Do Persons, As They Came Along The Road Hot And
Dusty, Used To Drop In And Rest And Take A Cup - Very Little Milk And Much
Gossip.
Two paths met just there, and people used to step in out of a
storm of rain, a sort of thatched house club.
Job was somehow on fair
terms with nearly everybody, and that is a wonderful thing in a village,
where everybody knows everybody's business, and petty interests
continually cross. The strangest fellow and the strangest way of life,
and yet I do not believe a black mark was ever put against him; the
shiftiness was all for nothing. It arose, no doubt, out of the constant
and eager straining to gain a little advantage and make an extra penny.
Had Job been a Jew he would have been rich. He was the exact counterpart
of the London Jew dealer, set down in the midst of the country. Job
should have been rich. Such immense dark brown jumbles, such
cheek-distenders - never any French sweetmeats or chocolate or bonbons to
equal these. I really think I could eat one now. 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.
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