“It will be better than the story in the book, wont it?”
Our first call was on Miss Grimshaw. She was a milliner in the village, and her one shop window was full of pictures of highly dressed women, whose feathers, bonnets, and flowers made a great impression upon her customers, to say nothing of the awe Jennie and I felt in the presence of such magnificence.
Miss Grimshaw received us very cordially; and when I told her we wanted work together, she shook her head.
After thinking a while, she said with sincere tenderness, “Jennie had better stay with me. She is too delicate to do heavy work; I will give her a light task, and let her have several hours to study every day: and it is very probable that you can find employment in the village; so it will not be much of a separation.”
It was soon settled that Jennie should remain with Miss Grimshaw; and I went to look out for myself elsewhere. Fortunately the grocer who lived directly opposite wanted a boy; and after examining me a little in arithmetic, and also asking me to write his name and my own, he finally said,
“You may try, although I will not promise to keep you a single day.”
Every little village has its great man; and the village of Claverton, nestled at the foot of the green hills, was not without its rich man, Esquire Clavers being the original proprietor from whom it took its name.
He was a little wiry man, with sparkling eyes and a hooked nose, spare thin hair, and whiskers thickly sprinkled with grey, and a voice that sounded any thing but musical, especially to the poor.
Very precise in his toilet was Esquire Clavers; his linen was always unexceptionable, his watch chain of the largest dimensions, and from it dangled a massive seal and gold key, while his gold-headed cane seemed almost a part of himself, for never was he seen without it. He lived in a two-story yellow house at the head of the principal street, and the people looked up to him with a deferential air given to no other person, not even the minister.
Mr. Willett, the grocery keeper, was the next on the list; and it not unfrequently happened, as his front shop was the largest one in town, that it proved the rendezvous for politicians and news-mongers—Esquire Clavers being of course the main speaker in the assembly, and the oracle in matters of opinion in all Claverton.