when the parson's boys had ridden and retired along with their mamma
and papa, other young gentlemen of humbler rank in the village were
placed upon "George of Denmark" and "William of Nassau;" the
Corporal joking and laughing with all the grown-up people. The
women, in spite of Mr. Brock's age, his red nose, and a certain
squint of his eye, vowed the Corporal was a jewel of a man; and
among the men his popularity was equally great.

"How much dost thee get, Thomas Clodpole?" said Mr. Brock to a
countryman (he was the man whom Mrs. Catherine had described as her
suitor), who had laughed loudest at some of his jokes: "how much
dost thee get for a week's work, now?"

Mr. Clodpole, whose name was really Bullock, stated that his wages
amounted to "three shillings and a puddn."

"Three shillings and a puddn!--monstrous!--and for this you toil
like a galley-slave, as I have seen them in Turkey and America,--ay,
gentlemen, and in the country of Prester John! You shiver out of
bed on icy winter mornings, to break the ice for Ball and Dapple to
drink."

"Yes, indeed," said the person addressed, who seemed astounded at
the extent of the Corporal's information.

"Or you clean pigsty, and take dung down to meadow; or you act
watchdog and tend sheep; or you sweep a scythe over a great field of
grass; and when the sun has scorched the eyes out of your head, and
sweated the flesh off your bones, and well-nigh fried the soul out
of your body, you go home, to what?--three shillings a week and a