tly sullen,
and partly irascible; his complexion was indescribable; the little hair
which he had, which was almost entirely on the sides and the back part of
his head, was of an iron-grey hue. He wore a leather hat on ordinary
days, low at the crown, and with the side eaves turned up. A dirty
pepper and salt coat, a waistcoat which had once been red, but which had
lost its pristine colour, and looked brown; dirty yellow leather
breeches, grey worsted stockings, and high-lows. Surely I was right when
I said he was a very different groom to those of the present day, whether
Welsh or English? What say you, Sir Watkin? What say you, my Lord of
Exeter? He looked after the horses, and occasionally assisted in the
house of a person who lived at the end of an alley, in which the office
of the gentleman to whom I was articled was situated, and having to pass
by the door of the office half-a-dozen times in the day, he did not fail
to attract the notice of the clerks, who, sometimes individually,
sometimes by twos, sometimes by threes, or even more, not unfrequently
stood at the door, bareheaded--mis-spending the time which was not
legally their own. Sundry observations, none of them very flattering,
did the clerks and, amongst them, myself, make upon the groom, as he
passed and repassed, some of them direct, others somewhat oblique. To
these he made no reply save by looks, which had in them something
dangerous and menacing, and clenching without raising his fists, which
looked singularly hard and horny. At length a whisper ran about the
alley that the groom was a Welshman; this whisper much increased the
malice of my brother clerks against him, who were now whenever he passed
the door, and they happened to be there by twos or threes, in the habit
of saying something, as if by accident, against Wales and Welshmen, and,
individually or together, were in the habit of shouting out "Taffy," when
he was at some distance from them, and his back was turned, or regaling
his ears with the harmonious and well-known distich of "Taffy was a
Welshman, Taffy was a thief: Taffy came to my house and stole a piece of
beef." It had, however, a very different effect upon me. I was trying
to learn Welsh, and the idea occurring to me that the groom might be able
to assist me in my pursuit, I instantly lost all desire to torment him,
and determined to do my best to scrape acquaintance with him, and
persuade him to give me what assistance he co