He was now in charge of the business under his
father; stood behind the counter; weighed nails; examined locks
brought for repair; went to the different houses in Cowfold with a
man under him to look at boiler-pipes, the man wearing a cap and
George a tall hat. He had a hard, healthy, honest life, was up at
six o'clock in the morning, ate well, and slept well. He was always
permitted by his father to go on these excursions, and, in fact, they
could not have been a success without him. If anything went wrong he
was always the man to set it right. If a horse became restive,
George was invariably the one to jump out, and nobody else thought of
stirring. He had good expectations. The house in which the Allens
lived was their own. Mr. Allen did a thriving trade, not only in
Cowfold, but in all the country round, and particularly among the
village blacksmiths, to whom he sold iron. He had steadily saved
money, and had enlarged the original little back parlour into a room
which would hold comfortably a tea-party of ten or a dozen.
Miss Priscilla Broad was framed after a different model. Her face
was not much unlike that of one of those women of the Restoration so
familiar to us in half a hundred pictures.
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