ts
of the season, and a little later on, when he paid his visit of
ceremony at breakfast, he was far from cheerful: even Byronic, I might
almost say, in his outlook on life.

"I don't know," he said, "if you think with me, sir; but every
Christmas as comes round the world seems a hollerer thing to me. Why,
take an example now from what lays under my own eye. There's my
servant Eliza--been with me now for going on fifteen years. I thought
I could have placed my confidence in Elizar, and yet this very
morning--Christmas morning too, of all the blessed days in the
year--with the bells a ringing and--and--all like that--I say, this
very morning, had it not have been for Providence watching over us
all, that girl would have put--indeed I may go so far to say, 'ad put
the cheese on your breakfast table----" He saw I was about to speak,
and waved his hand at me. "It's all very well for you to say, 'Yes,
Mr. Bowman, but you took away the cheese and locked it up in the
cupboard,' which I did, and have the key here, or if not the actual
key one very much about the same size. That's true enough, sir, but
what do you think is the effect of that action on me? Why it's no
exaggeration for me to say that the ground is cut from under my feet.
And yet when I said as much to Eliza, not nasty, mind you, but just
firm like, what was my return? 'Oh,' she says: 'Well,' she says,
'there wasn't no bones broke, I suppose.' Well, sir, it 'urt me,
that's all I can say: it 'urt me, and I don't like to think of it
now."

There was an ominous pause here, in which I ventured to say something
like, "Yes, very trying," and then asked at what hour the church
service was to be. "Eleven o'clock," Mr. Bowman said with a heavy
sigh. "Ah, you won't have no such discourse from poor Mr. Lucas as
what you would have done from our late Rector. Him and me may have
had our little differences, and did do, more's the pity."

I could see that a powerful effort was needed to keep him off the
vexed question of the cask of beer, but he made it. "But I will say
this, that a better preacher, nor yet one to stand faster by his
rights, or what he considered to be his rights--however, that's not
the question now--I for one, never set under. Some might say, 'Was he
a eloquent man?' and to that my answer would be: 'Well, there you've a
better right per'aps to speak of your own uncle than what I have.'
Others might ask, 'Did he keep a hold of his congregation?' and there
a