“Well, my dear, I hope it is for the best. It will be a very serious thing for us if it should go wrong.”
“Very,” said the doctor drily; and Vane wondered what it might be.
Chapter Eleven.
Oiling the Clock.
The plan of the town of Mavis Greythorpe was very simple, being one long street with houses on either side, placed just as the builders pleased. Churchwarden Rounds’ long thatched place stood many yards back, which was convenient, for he liked to grow roses that his neighbours could see and admire. Crumps the cowkeeper’s, too, stood some distance back, but that was handy, for there was room for the cowshed and the dairy close to the path. Dredge, the butcher, had his open shop, too—a separate building from the house at the back—close to the path, where customers could see the mortal remains of one sheep a week, sometimes two, and in the cold weather a pig, and a half or third of a “beast,” otherwise a small bullock, the other portions being retained by neighbouring butchers at towns miles away, where the animal had been slain. But at fair time and Christmas, Butcher, or, as he pronounced it, Buttcher Dredge, to use his own words, “killed hissen” and a whole bullock was on exhibition in his open shop.
The houses named give a fair idea of the way in which architecture was arranged for in Mavis; every man who raised a house planted it where it seemed good in his own eyes; and as in most cases wayfarers stepped down out of the main street into the front rooms, the popular way of building seemed to have been that the builder dug a hole and then put a house in it.
Among those houses which were flush with the main street was that of Michael Chakes, clerk and sexton, who was also the principal shoemaker of Mavis, and his place of business was a low, open-windowed room with bench and seat, where, when not officially engaged, he sat at work, surrounded by the implements and products of his trade, every now and then opening his mouth and making a noise after repeating a couple of lines, under the impression that he was singing. Upon that point opinions differed.
Vane Lee wanted a piece of leather, and as there was nothing at home that he could cut up, saving one of the doctor’s Wellington boots, which were nearly new, he put on his cap, thrust his hands in his pockets, and set off for the town street, as eagerly as if his success in life depended upon his obtaining that piece of leather instanter.