It was near four o'clock in the afternoon. Eli was in the shop. His
eldest and youngest sons were abroad. Catherine and her little crippled
daughter had long been anxious about Gerard, and now they were gone a
little way down the road, to see if by good luck he might be visible
in the distance; and Giles was alone in the sitting-room, which I will
sketch, furniture and dwarf included.

The Hollanders were always an original and leading people. They claim
to have invented printing (wooden type), oil-painting, liberty,
banking, gardening, etc. Above all, years before my tale, they invented
cleanliness. So, while the English gentry, in velvet jerkins and
chicken-toed shoes, trode floors of stale rushes, foul receptacle of
bones, decomposing morsels, spittle, dogs, eggs, and all abominations,
this hosier's sitting-room at Tergou was floored with Dutch tiles, so
highly glazed and constantly washed, that you could eat off them. There
was one large window; the cross stone-work in the centre of it was
very massive, and stood in relief, looking like an actual cross to the
inmates, and was eyed as such in their devotions. The panes were very
small and lozenge-shaped, and soldered to one another with strips of
lead: the like you may see to this day in our rural cottages. The chairs
were rude and primitive, all but the arm-chair, whose back, at right
angles with its seat, was so high that the sitter's head stopped two
feet short of the top. This chair was of oak, and carved at the summit.
There was a copper pail, that went in at the waist, holding holy water,
and a little hand-besom to sprinkle it far and wide; and a long, narrow,
but massive oak table, and a dwarf sticking to its rim by his teeth, his
eyes glaring, and his claws in the air like a pouncing vampire. Nature,
it would seem, did not make Giles a dwarf out of malice prepense; she
constructed a head and torso with her usual care; but just then her
attention was distracted, and she left the rest to chance; the result