use to drive his carriage and pair in London!  And now he’s a doin’ of his best to live on nothink at all!—­leastways, so they tell me—­seem’ as how he’d have ’em believe he was turned a—­what’s it they call it!—­a—­a—­a wegetablarian!—­that’s what he do, sir!  But I know better.  He may be eatin’ grass like a ox, as did that same old king o’ Israel as growed the feathers and claws in consequence; and I don’t say he ain’t; but one thing I’m sure of, and that is, that if he be, it’s by cause he can’t help it.  Why, sir, I put it to you—­no gentleman would—­if he could help it.—­Why don’t he come to me for a bit o’ wholesome meat?” he went on in a sorely injured tone.  “He knows I’m ready for anythink in reason!  Them peas an’ beans an’ cabbages an’ porridges an’ carrots an’ turmits—­why, sir, they ain’t nothink at all but water an’ wind.  I don’t say as they mayn’t keep a body alive for a year or two, but, bless you, there’s nothink in them; and the man’ll be a skelinton long before he’s dead an’ buried; an’ I shed jest like to know where’s the good o’ life on sich terms as them!”

Thus Jones, the butcher—­a man who never sold bad meat, never charged for an ounce more than he delivered, and when he sold to the poor, considered them.  In buying and selling he had a weakness for giving the fair play he demanded.  He had a little spare money somewhere, but he did not make a fortune out of hunger, retire early, and build churches.  A local preacher once asked him if he knew what was the plan of salvation.  He answered with the utmost innocence, cutting him off a great lump of leg of beef for a family he had just told him was starving, that he hadn’t an idea, but no Christian could doubt it was all right.

The curate, then, pondering over what Mr. Jones had told him, had an idea; and now he and his wife were speedily of one mind as to attempting an arrangement for Juliet with Miss Drake.  What she would be able to pay would, they thought, ease them a little, while she would have the advantage of a better protection than a lodging with more humble people would afford her.  Juliet was willing for any thing they thought best.

Wingfold therefore called on the minister, to make the proposal to him, and was shown up to his study—­a mere box, where there was just room for a chair on each side of the little writing-table.  The walls from top to bottom were entirely hidden with books.

Mr. Drake received him with a touching mixture of sadness and cordiality, and heard in silence what he had to say.

“It is very kind of you to think of us, Mr. Wingfold,” he replied, after a moment’s pause.  “But I fear the thing is impossible.  Indeed, it is out of the question.  Circumstances are changed with us.  Things are not as they once were.”