Now Jin Vin was so full of his jibes and
jeers, and so willing, and so ready, and so serviceable, and so
mannerly all the while, with a step that sprung like a buck's in
Epping Forest, and his eye that twinkled as black as a gipsy's, that
no woman who knew the world would make a comparison betwixt the lads.
As for poor neighbour Ramsay himself, the man," she said, "was a civil
neighbour, and a learned man, doubtless, and might be a rich man if he
had common sense to back his learning; and doubtless, for a Scot,
neighbour Ramsay was nothing of a bad man, but he was so constantly
grimed with smoke, gilded with brass filings, and smeared with lamp-
black and oil, that Dame Simmons judged it would require his whole
shopful of watches to induce any feasible woman to touch the said
neighbour Ramsay with any thing save a pair of tongs."
A still higher authority, Dame Ursula, wife to Benjamin Suddlechop,
the barber, was of exactly the same opinion.
Such were, in natural qualities and public estimation, the two youths,
who, in a fine April day, having first rendered their dutiful service
and attendance on the table of their master and his daughter, at their
dinner at one o'clock,--Such, O ye lads of London, was the severe
discipline undergone by your predecessors!--and having regaled
themselves upon the fragments, in company with two female domestics,
one a cook, and maid of all work, the other called Mistress Margaret's
maid, now relieved their master in the duty of the outward shop; and
agreeably to the established custom, were soliciting, by their
entreaties and recommendations of their master's manufacture, the
attention and encouragement of the passengers.
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