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 houseclub. 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 beenrich. He was the exact 
counterpart of the London Jew dealer, set down in the 
midst of the country. Jobshould 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: 
