, his manners enticing,
his stories amusing, his jokes witty? Not at all. He is a silent fellow,
scarce opening his mouth except to curse the poor scrub of a maid servant,
or to abuse a man who has not paid his score. He slinks in and lights his
pipe, smokes it silently, and slinks out again. He is the octopus of the
hamlet, fastening on the cottage homes and sucking the life-blood from
them. He misses nothing, and nothing comes amiss to him.

His wife, perhaps, then, may be the centre of attraction? She is a short,
stout woman, whose cheeks as she walks wobble with fat, whose face is ever
dirty, and dress (at home) slatternly. But mayhap her heart is in the
right place, and when Hodge is missed from his accustomed seat by the fire
of an evening, when it is bruited abroad that he is down with illness,
hurriedly slips on her bonnet, and saying nothing, carries a basket of
good things to cheer the inner man? Or, when his wife is confined, perhaps
she brings some little delicacies, a breast of pheasant, a bottle of port
wine, and strengthens her with motherly counsel in the hour of her
travail. Is this so? Hodge's wife could tell you that the cottage door has
never been darkened by her presence: that she indeed would not acknowledge
her if passed by chance on the road. For the landlady sails forth to the
adjacent town in all the glory of those fine feathers that proverbially
make the fine bird.

It is a goodly spectacle to see her in rustling ample silk, in costly
sealskin, in a bonnet 'loud' but rich, shading a countenance that glows
ruddy red as a furnace. A gold chain encircles her portly neck, with a
gold watch thereto attached; gold rings upon her fingers, in one of which
sparkles a brilliant diamond; gold earrings, gold brooch, kid gloves
bursting from the fatness of the fingers they encase. The dingy trap and
limping rawboned hack which carry her to the outskirts of the town
scarcely harmonise with so much glory. But at the outskirts she alights,
and enters the street in full dignity. By some potent alchemy the sweat of
Hodge's brow has become condensed into that sparkling diamond, which is
disclosed when the glove is drawn off in the shops, to the admiration of
all beholders.

Or, if not the wife, perhaps it may be the daughter who is the magnet that
draws the very timber across the parish? She is not ill-looking, and might
pass muster in her best dress were it not for a squareness of build, like
the set of a man