understood to have been let to the stranger with a sallow complexion and
a buff cravat, whose first appearance had caused some excitement in the
bar of the Woolpack, where he had called to wait for the coach.

Grimworth, to a discerning eye, was a good place to set up shopkeeping
in. There was no competition in it at present; the Church-people had
their own grocer and draper; the Dissenters had theirs; and the two or
three butchers found a ready market for their joints without strict
reference to religious persuasion--except that the rector's wife had
given a general order for the veal sweet-breads and the mutton kidneys,
while Mr. Rodd, the Baptist minister, had requested that, so far as was
compatible with the fair accommodation of other customers, the sheep's
trotters might be reserved for him. And it was likely to be a growing
place, for the trustees of Mr. Zephaniah Crypt's Charity, under the
stimulus of a late visitation by commissioners, were beginning to apply
long-accumulating funds to the rebuilding of the Yellow Coat School,
which was henceforth to be carried forward on a greatly-extended scale,
the testator having left no restrictions concerning the curriculum, but
only concerning the coat.

The shopkeepers at Grimworth were by no means unanimous as to the
advantages promised by this prospect of increased population and trading,
being substantial men, who liked doing a quiet business in which they
were sure of their customers, and could calculate their returns to a
nicety. Hitherto, it had been held a point of honour by the families in
Grimworth parish, to buy their sugar and their flannel at the shop where
their fathers and mothers had bought before them; but, if newcomers were
to bring in the system of neck-and-neck trading, and solicit feminine
eyes by gown-pieces laid in fan-like folds, and surmounted by artificial
flowers, giving them a factitious charm (for on what human figure would a