the Italian had made of it, and, what is more astonishing,
how little it had cost him. He had, indeed, painted the walls of the
hall, staircase, and the rooms appropriated to himself, with his own
hands. His servant had done the greater part of the upholstery. The two
between them had got the garden into order.

The Italians seemed to have taken a joint love to the place, and to deck
it as they would have done some favourite chapel to their Madonna.

It was long before the natives reconciled themselves to the odd ways
of the foreign settlers. The first thing that offended them was the
exceeding smallness of the household bills. Three days out of the seven,
indeed, both man and master dined on nothing else but the vegetables in
the garden, and the fishes in the neighbouring rill; when no trout
could be caught they fried the minnows (and certainly, even in the best
streams, minnows are more frequently caught than trout). The next thing
which angered the natives quite as much, especially the female part of
the neighbourhood, was the very sparing employment the two he creatures
gave to the sex usually deemed so indispensable in household matters. At
first, indeed, they had no woman-servant at all. But this created
such horror that Parson Dale ventured a hint upon the matter, which
Riccabocca took in very good part; and an old woman was forthwith
engaged after some bargaining--at three shillings a week--to wash and
scrub as much as she liked during the daytime. She always returned
to her own cottage to sleep. The man-servant, who was styled in the
neighbourhood "Jackeymo," did all else for his master,--smoothed his
room, dusted his papers, prepared his coffee, cooked his dinner, brushed
his clothes, and cleaned his pipes, of which Riccabocca had a large
collection. But however close a man's character, it generally creeps out
in driblets; and on many little occasions the Italian had shown acts of
kindness, and, on some more rare occasions, even of generosity,
which had served to silence his calumniators, and by degrees he had
established a very fair reputation,--suspected, it is true, of being a
little inclined to the Black Art, and of a strange inclination to starve
Jackeymo and himself, in other respects harmless enough.

Signor Riccabocca had become very intimate, as we have seen, at the
Parsonage. But not so at the Hall. For though the squire was inclined
to be very friendly to all his neighbours, he was, like most coun