n the
wholesale than the retail line of business, and his shop was
nothing very great to look at, and did not at all indicate the
scope of his real trade and substance; but it was a convenient
place for customers to come to, to examine samples and talk over
their orders. Martin Holt sat all day long in a parlour behind the
shop, pretty well filled with bales and sacks and other impedimenta
of his trade, and received those who came to him in the way of
business. He had warehouses, too, along the wharves of Thames
Street, and visited them regularly; but he preferred to transact
business in his own house, and this dull-looking shop was quite a
small centre for wool merchants, wool manufacturers, and even for
the farmers who grew the wool on the backs of the sheep they bred
in the green pastures. No more upright and fair-dealing man than
Martin Holt was to be found in all London town; and though he had
not made haste to be rich, like some, nor had his father before
him, having a wholesome horror of those tricks and shifts which
have grown more and more common as the world has grown older, yet
honest dealing and equitable trading had had its own substantial
reward, and wealth was now steadily flowing into Martin's coffers,
albeit he remained just the same simple, unassuming man of business
as he had ever been when the golden stream of prosperity had not
reached his doors.

But the ground floor of the bridge house being occupied in business
purposes, the first floor had of necessity been given up to cookery
and feeding. The front room was the eating parlour, and was only
furnished by a long table and benches, with one high-backed
armchair at either end. It overlooked the street and the river,
like the living parlour above; and behind lay the kitchen, with a
back kitchen or scullery beyond. From the windows of either of
these back rooms the busy cooks could fling their refuse into the
river, and exceedingly handy did they find this, as did likewise
their neighbours. Nor did the fact that the river water was drunk
by themselves and a large number of the inhabitants of the city in
any way interfere with their satisfaction at the convenience of
these domestic arrangements. The beat, beat of the great water
wheel was always in their ears to remind them; but no misgivings
had yet assailed our forefathers as to the desirability of drinking
water polluted by sewage and other abominations. True, the plague
was constantly desolating