“Well, Aunt Quarles, is it your meaning to undertake a new master?”

“Don’t know, nephy—­can’t say yet what he’ll be like:  if he’ll leave us as we are, won’t say wont.”

“Ay, as we are, indeed; comfortable quarters, and some little to put by, too:  a pretty penny you will have laid up all this while, I’ll be bound:  I wager you now it is a good five hundred, aunt—­come, done for a shilling.”

“Get along, foolish boy; a’n’t you o’ the tribe o’ wisdom too—­ha, ha, ha!”

“I will not say,” smirked Simon, “that my nest has not a feather.”

“It’s easy work for us, Nep; we hunt in couples:  you the men, and I the maids—­ha, ha!”

“Tush, Aunt Bridget! that speech is not quite gallant, I fear.”  And the worshipful extortioners giggled jovially.

“But it’s true enough for all that, Simon:  how d’ye manage it, eh, boy? much like me, I s’pose; wages every quarter from the maids, dues from tradesmen Christmas-tide and Easter, regular as Parson Evans’s; pretty little bits tacked on weekly to the bills, beside presents from every body; and so, boy, my poor forty pounds a-year soon mounts up to a hundred.”

“Ay, ay, Aunt Bridget—­but I get the start of you, though you probably were born a week before-hand:  talk of parsons, look at me, a regular grand pluralist monopolist, as any bishop can be; butler in doors, bailiff out of doors, land-steward, house-steward, cellar-man, and pay-master.  I am not all this for naught, Aunt Quarles:  if so much goes through my fingers, it is but fair that something stick.”

“True, Simon—­O certainly; but if you come to boasting, my boy, I don’t carry this big bunch o’ keys for nothing neither.  Lord love you! why merely for cribbings in the linen-line for one month, John Draper swapped me that there shawl:  none o’ my clothes ever cost me a penny, and I a’n’t quite as bare as a new-born baby neither.  Look at them trunks, bless you!”

“Ay, ay, aunt, I’ll be bound the printer of your prayer-book has left out a ‘not,’ before the ‘steal,’ eh?—­ha! ha!”

“Fie, naughty Simon, fie! them’s not stealings, them’s parquisites.  Where’s the good o’ living in a great house else?  But come, Si, haven’t you struck out the ‘not,’ for yourself, though the printer did his duty, eh, Nep?”

“Not a bit, aunt—­not a bit:  all sheer honesty and industry.  Look at my pretty little truck-shop down the village.  Wo betide the labourer that leaves off dealing there! not one that works at Hurstley, but eats my bread and bacon; besides the ‘tea, coffee, tobacco, and snuff.’”

“Pretty fairish articles, eh?  I never dealt with you, Si:  no, Nep, no—­you never saw the colour o’ my money.”

Jennings gave a start, as if a thought had pricked him; but gayly recovering himself, said,

“Oh, as to pretty fairish, I know there is one thing about the bacon good enough; ay, and the bread too—­the very best of prices; ha! ha! is not that good?  And for the other genuine articles, I don’t know that much of the tea comes from China—­and the coffee is sold ground, because it is burnt maize—­and there’s a plenty of wholesome cabbage leaf cut up in the tobacco—­while as for snuff, I give them a dry, peppery, choky, sneezy dust, and I dare say that it does its duty.”