Tim contrived to keep up to this standard of comparative comfort, too, in spite of a breeding wife, who had stocked his cottage with nine "small children," though he was not married till he was thirty. With so many excellences, who could have thought that any one would be bad enough to attempt to mar Tim's well-earned happiness? But the world is, what we have just termed it, a crooked world; and so poor Tim was doomed to meet with undeserved annoyance.
Just opposite Tim's little shop lived a great professor of sour-godliness. Unluckily, he was not only of the same homely trade with Tim, but was enabled to hold up his head more loftily among his fellow-tradesmen, by reason that a maiden aunt happened to die and leave him a neat little freehold that brought him in 50l. a-year, in addition to his earnings by the shears, needle, and thimble. Jedediah Prim—for so was this fortunate tailor called—was adjudged by his neighbours to be ill-disposed towards his poorer brother snip, solely because Tim had always sufficient employ for himself and an apprentice, whereas Prim's manners were so uninviting, and his character so mean, that he barely ensured occupation for his own solitary needle.
Since Prim, at heart, was a worshipper of Mammon above all other gods, it was not at all wonderful that he felt envious at his neighbour's trade. Nevertheless, Prim ever affected the greatest scorn of these neighbourly charges of avarice and envy, and most piously averred that he had no other distaste to "the man over the way," as he called Tim, than that which was created in his soul by "the ungodly man's profaneness!" "He is every day selling his soul to Satan by the whistling of the Evil One's own tunes!" was Prim's godly lamentation over the evil ways of his neighbour. This was a severe hit at the only kind of recreation in which poor Tim indulged. He had been a hard whistler, as well as a hard worker, from a lad; and from the peculiarity of his way of whistling, which very much resembled an endless twitter, Tim caught the curious soubriquet of "Swallow-whistle" among his fellow-apprentices at Cocky Davy's, and kept it to his dying day.
Now, whistling or twittering are but very humble kinds of melody, but I care not however lowly or merely imitative may be the degree of the divine faculty of music that a human creature may be endowed with, I'll warrant him, there will be something like real nobility of heart or mind about him, let his vocation and whereabouts in this ill-arranged world be what it may. And truly, so much might, without hesitancy, be affirmed of twittering Tim the tailor of Horncastle. With all his knowledge of the ill-will borne towards him by Prim the puritan, Tim Swallow-whistle would have sprung off his shop-board like a bounding fawn, and with a bounding heart of joy, to have done the envious Jedediah a good turn. Yet, with all his bountiful good-nature, Tim possessed a fair share of shrewdness. He had lived long enough to learn that over-weening envy usually overshoots its mark, and most severely punishes its own voluntary slaves. Thus, of all men in the little town of Horncastle, Tim Swallow-whistle was least disturbed at what every one talked of as a scandalous matter, namely, the envy and malevolence of Jedediah Prim, the religious tailor. "Never mind; 'every dog has his day!'" Tim would reply, and twitter away again, to every successive tale his neighbours brought him, about what Prim said, and what Prim did: for you never knew of two neighbours being "at outs" in your life, but a host of voluntary messengers, on either side, could be found to fetch and carry fuel to maintain the heat between them.
What moved Tim Swallow-whistle more than any other event in his life was the fact of Prim the puritan being made overseer of the poor, and throwing Tim's poor old grandmother entirely upon his maintenance. The aged woman had nearly reached a century of years; and, at the mere cost of half-a-crown per week to the parish, was nursed in her second childhood by Tim's widowed mother, who lived in a little cottage, hard by her son. Tim had willingly, nay eagerly, contributed to supply the wants of the two aged women through all the difficulties felt by a man situated as he was, with an increasing family, for there was not a grain of sordidness in his noble nature; but it was no joke for poor Tim to have the entire weight of the burthen cast upon him. For several days after the announcement was formally made him—and pious Prim took care to have the devilish satisfaction of performing the annoying business himself—poor Tim suspended his twittering, and "struck his needle dead" in a savage mood of reflection. Tim's reflection ended, however, in the way that, with such a heart, it was natural for it to end,—in the manly resolve that he would work the very skin off his fingers, and go without a meal every day in the week, rather than permit his old grandmother to want. "Every dog has his day!" echoed Tim, recovering his wonted elasticity of spirits; "Jedediah Prim will not be overseer of the poor for the parish of Horncastle to all eternity;" and away he burst into a mellifluous twitter that floated, in the form of "Merrily danced the Quakers," gaily across the street, and entered into the very "porches of the ears" of Prim the puritan, much to the deadly annoyance of that heart of envy. During the continuance of Tim's overture for the day, there entered into his cottage a travelling tinker, who besought leave of the tailor to light his pipe.
"Ay, lad, and welcome," blithely answered Tim; and away he went twittering his old burthen of "Merrily danced the Quakers."
"Marry, good faith, maister!" said the tinker, folding his arms and looking as if he felt inclined for 'a bit of chat,' as they say in Lincolnshire; "why, that was the very tune my poor old mother was so fond of! I can't help feeling fond on't, d'ye know, maister; for my mother was a good mother to me—the Lord rest her soul!" and the hardy tinker's voice faltered in a way that showed his heart had its tender place, notwithstanding his rough exterior. Tim's twittering was arrested; the tinker had touched him on a tender chord, and his whole heart vibrated, sympathetically.
"Sit you down a while, friend, and smoke your pipe quietly," said Tim, pointing to a seat near his shop-board; "I'll tell our Becky to get out the copper kettle for you to mend as soon as she comes down stairs; we haven't used it these three years for want o'mending."
"And times have been too hard for you to have it mended before, I reckon, maister," said the tinker.
"Nay, as for that," replied Tim with a smile and a shake of the head, "they're not much mended now; I find it to be only a cross-grained world, I'll assure you, friend; but I always make it a maxim to take things as easy as I can; for, as I always say, 'Every dog has his day,' and among the rest of the poor dogs one doesn't know but one's own turn to have a day may come yet."