sign was over his door; in fact--as with old banks and mercantile
houses--advertising in any shape was scorned, and it would have been felt
as beneath his dignity to paint up, for the benefit of strangers, the
name of an establishment whose trade came solely by connection based on
personal respect.

His visitors now came and stood on the outside of his window, sometimes
leaning against the sill, sometimes moving a pace or two backwards and
forwards in front of it. They talked with deliberate gesticulations to
Mr. Penny, enthroned in the shadow of the interior.

"I do like a man to stick to men who be in the same line o' life--o'
Sundays, anyway--that I do so."

"'Tis like all the doings of folk who don't know what a day's work is,
that's what I say."

"My belief is the man's not to blame; 'tis she--she's the bitter weed!"

"No, not altogether. He's a poor gawk-hammer. Look at his sermon
yesterday."

"His sermon was well enough, a very good guessable sermon, only he
couldn't put it into words and speak it. That's all was the matter wi'
the sermon. He hadn't been able to get it past his pen."

"Well--ay, the sermon might have been good; for, 'tis true, the sermon of
Old Eccl'iastes himself lay in Eccl'iastes's ink-bottle afore he got it
out."