that was
ever done at Frayne's; and at night she went round trying to get
orders, delivering the goods that she had completed, and being forced
to support the impudence and familiarity of coachmen and grooms, who
chucked her under the chin and said they'd give her a kiss for her
pains because they weren't flush enough to stand her a drink. All
painfully sad.

There was a dreadful lot of tippling at Rodchurch: in fact, one might
say that drink was the prevailing fault of the village. The vicar
publicly touched on the matter in his sermons, and privately he often
said that Mr. Cope, the fat landlord of The Gauntlet Inn, was greatly
to blame. The tradesmen had a little club at the Gauntlet, where Cope
employed a horrid brazen barmaid who sometimes sang comic songs to the
club members. Mrs. Cope felt strongly about the barmaid, and quite
took the vicar's side in the dispute the day that Cope came out of the
tap-room and was so rude and abusive to the reverend gentleman. Mrs.
Cope said she'd be glad if Mr. Norton brought her husband to book
before the magistrates and got his license taken away.

Dale openly expressed contempt for this boozing Gauntlet club, refused
to take up his membership when elected, and had received a
complimentary letter from the vicar thanking him for the fine example
he had set for others. No, dear old Will, though he liked his glass of
beer as well as anybody, would often go a whole week on tea and
coffee; and she thought what a merit his sobriety had been. Merely
considered as economy, it was a blessing. It is always the drink, and
never the food, that runs away with one's household money.

Mr. Silcox the tobacconist hurried through the lamplight,
unquestionably on his way to the Gauntlet. Silcox was a chattering
foolish creature who had lost his own and his widowed mother's savings
in a ridiculous commercial enterprise--a promptly bankrupt theater
company over at Rodhaven--and it was thought that the workhouse would
be the end for him and Mrs. Silcox. But early this summer people had
been startled by hearing that the _Courier_ had appointed Silcox as
their reporter; and local critics were of opinion that Silcox had
taken very kindly to literature, and that he was shaping well, and
might perhaps retrieve the past in making name and fortune. Dale, who
used to chaff Silcox rather heavily, was at present quite polite to
him. It had always been Will's policy to stand well with the press,
and there