too A KENTISH PARISH 



bulky farmers, with jolly, hearty faces, and cheeks like 

 Kentish pippins, in broad-skirted coats with volumi- 

 nous pockets, and breeches, gaiters, and square-toed 

 boots. Though there is a sprinkling of the younger 

 generation of agriculturists and speculative corn-factors, 

 who run up to town periodically to have dealings with 

 brokers in the borough, who disport themselves in 

 smart cutaway velveteens and gorgeous neckties with 

 horseshoe pins. The talk of these younger bloods is 

 of horse-flesh and music-halls as much as of corn and 

 hops and bullocks. At the farmers' ordinary it is a 

 case of cut and come again, amidst the merry roar of 

 stentorian voices, the clink of tankards and the jingle 

 of glasses ; when Boniface, the dapper little landlord, 

 has come staggering in under some ponderous sirloin, 

 and the table would groan under its burden if it were 

 not warranted up to any weight. Then Maltby of the 

 brewery will be voted into the chair, or Grindley the 

 great miller and hop-grower, or old Mr. Pigswash 

 from the Moat farm ; while Skinner, the lean, weasel- 

 faced lawyer, will drop in from his office over the way, 

 and get value for the price of his dinner by doing some 

 strokes of business on the sly. It takes all Mr. 

 Skinner's tact to be equal to the embarrassments of the 

 situation ; but he has the knack of always looking after 

 the main chance, with an appearance of devil-may-care 

 bonhomie that imposes on people, although it scarcely 

 deceives them. The farmers, who have very good 

 reason to respect his sinister powers, eye him askance, 

 and are extraordinarily civil ; but every now and then 



