take cold as in hot weather. He usually wore a bearskin great-coat, a
silk handkerchief over his cravat, top boots on those sturdy pillars his
legs, a huge pair of overalls, and a hat, which, from, the day in which
it first came into his possession to that in which it was thrown aside,
never knew the comfort of being freed from its oilskin--never was allowed
to display the glossy freshness of its sable youth. Poor dear hat! how its
vanity (if hats have vanity) must have suffered! For certain its owner
had none, unless a lurking pride in his own bluffness and bluntness
may be termed such. He piqued himself on being a plain downright
Englishman, and on a voice and address pretty much like his apparel,
rough, strong, and warm, fit for all weathers. A heartier person never
lived.

In his profession he was eminently skilful, bold, confident, and
successful. The neighbouring physicians liked to come after Mr. Hallett;
they were sure to find nothing to undo. And blunt and abrupt as was
his general manner, he was kind and gentle in a sick-room; only nervous
disorders, the pet diseases of Mr. Simon Saunders, he could not abide.
He made short work with them; frightened them away as one does by
children when they have the hiccough; or if the malady were pertinacious
and would not go, he fairly turned off the patient. Once or twice,
indeed, on such occasions, the patient got the start, and turned him
off; Mrs. Emery, for instance, the lady's maid at New Place, most
delicate and mincing of waiting-gentlewomen, motioned him from her
presence; and Miss Deane, daughter of Martha Deane, haberdasher,
who, after completing her education at a boarding-school, kept a closet
full of millinery in a little den behind her mamma's shop, and was by
many degrees the finest lady in Hazelby, was so provoked at being told
by him that nothing ailed her, that, to prove her weakly condition, she
pushed him by main force out of doors.