316 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 



of money. It was done probably by buying and selling 

 almost simultaneously, so that the cash passed really 

 from one customer to another, and was never his at all. 

 Also he worked as a labourer, chiefly piecework ; also 

 Mrs. Job had a shop window about two feet square : snuff 

 and tobacco, bread and cheese, immense big round jum- 

 bles and sugar, kept on the floor above, and reached 

 down by hand, when wanted, through the opening for the 

 ladder stairs. The front door Job's right hand was 

 always open in summer, and the flagstones of the floor 

 chalked round their edges ; a clean table, clean chairs, 

 decent crockery, an old clock about an hour slow, a large 

 hearth with a minute fire to boil the kettle without heat- 

 ing the room. 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 won- 

 derful thing in a village, where everybody knows every- 

 body'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 check-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 



