MY OLD VILLAGE. 



The next cottage was a very marked one, for houses 

 grow to their owners. The low thatched roof had 

 rounded itself and stooped down to fit itself to Job's 

 shoulders ; the walls had got short and thick to suit him, 

 and they had a yellowish colour, like his complexion, as 

 if chewing tobacco had stained his checks right through. 

 Tobacco juice had likewise penetrated and tinted the wall. 

 It was cut off as it seemed by a party-wall into one room, 

 instead of which there were more rooms beyond which 

 no one would have suspected. Job had a way of shak- 

 ing hands with you with his right hand, while his left 

 hand was casually doing something else in a detached 

 sort of way. ' Yes, sir,' and ' No, sir,' and nodding to 

 everything you said all so complaisant, but at the end 

 of the bargain you generally found yourself a few shil- 

 lings in some roundabout manner on the wrong side. Job 

 had a lot of shut-up rooms in his house and in his cha- 

 racter, which never seemed to be opened to daylight. The 

 eaves hung over and beetled like his brows, and he had 

 a forelock, a regular antique forelock, which he used to 

 touch with the greatest humility. There was a long 

 bough of an elm hanging over one gable just like the fore- 

 lock. His face was a blank, like the broad end wall of 

 the cottage, which had no window at least you might 

 think so until you looked up and discovered one little 

 arrow slit, one narrow pane, and woke with a start to the 

 idea that Job was always up there watching and listening. 

 That was how he looked out of his one eye so intensely 

 cunning, the other being a wall eye that is, the world 

 supposed so, as he kept it half shut, always between the 

 lights ; but whether it was really blind or not I cannot 

 say. Job caught rats and rabbits and moles, and 

 bought fagots or potatoes, or fruit or rabbit-skins, or 

 rusty iron : wonderful how he seemed to have command 



