flower-beds. That house was built on purpose to show in what an
exceeding small compass comfort may be packed. Well, I will loiter
there no longer.

The next tenement is a place of importance, the Rose Inn: a
white-washed building, retired from the road behind its fine
swinging sign, with a little bow-window room coming out on one side,
and forming, with our stable on the other, a sort of open square,
which is the constant resort of carts, waggons, and return chaises.
There are two carts there now, and mine host is serving them with
beer in his eternal red waistcoat. He is a thriving man and a
portly, as his waistcoat attests, which has been twice let out
within this twelvemonth. Our landlord has a stirring wife, a
hopeful son, and a daughter, the belle of the village; not so pretty
as the fair nymph of the shoe-shop, and far less elegant, but ten
times as fine; all curl-papers in the morning, like a porcupine, all
curls in the afternoon, like a poodle, with more flounces than
curl-papers, and more lovers than curls. Miss Phoebe is fitter for
town than country; and to do her justice, she has a consciousness of
that fitness, and turns her steps townward as often as she can. She
is gone to B---- to-day with her last and principal lover, a
recruiting sergeant--a man as tall as Sergeant Kite, and as
impudent. Some day or other he will carry off Miss Phoebe.

In a line with the bow-window room is a low garden-wall, belonging
to a house under repair:--the white house opposite the
collar-maker's shop, with four lime-trees before it, and a
waggon-load of bricks at the door. That house is the plaything of a
wealthy, well-meaning, whimsical person who lives about a mile off.
He has a passion for brick and mortar, and, being too wise to meddle