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like Swiss houses; a sinuous and stony gutter winding up
hill and round the corner, by way of street. All the
children running out directly. Women pausing in washing, to
peep from doorways and very little windows. Such were the
observations of Messrs. Idle and Goodchild, as their
conveyance stopped at the village shoemaker's. Old Carrock
gloomed down upon it all in a very ill-tempered state; and
rain was beginning.
The village shoemaker declined to have anything to do with
Carrock. No visitors went up Carrock. No visitors came there
at all. Aa' the world ganged awa' yon. The driver appealed
to the Innkeeper. The Innkeeper, had two men working in the
fields, and one of them should be called in, to go up
Carrock as guide. Messrs. Idle and Goodchild, highly
approving, entered the Innkeeper's house, to drink whiskey
and eat oatcake.
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The Innkeeper was not idle enough -was not idle at all,
which was a great fault in him - but was a fine specimen of
a north-country man, or any kind of man. He had a ruddy
cheek, a bright eye, a well-knit frame, an immense hand, a
cheery outspeaking voice, and a straight, bright, broad
look. He had a drawing-room, too, upstairs, which was worth
a visit to the Cumberland Fells. (This was Mr. Francis
Goodchild's opinion, in which Mr. Thomas Idle did not
concur.)
The ceiling of this drawing-room was so crossed and
recrossed by beams of unequal lengths, radiating from a
centre, in a corner, that it looked like a broken star-fish.
The room was comfortably and solidly furnished with good
mahogany and horsehair. It had a snug fire-side, and a
couple of well-curtained windows, looking out upon the wild
country behind the house. What it most developed was, an
unexpected taste for little ornaments and nick-nacks, of
which it contained a most surprising number. They were not
very various, consisting in great part of waxen babies with
their limbs more or less mutilated, appealing on one leg to
the paternal affections from under little cupping glasses;
but Uncle Tom was there, in crockery, receiving theological
instructions from Miss Eva, who grew out of his side like a
wen, in an exceedingly rough state of profile propagandism.
Engravings of Mr. Hunts country boy, before and after his
pie, were on the wall, divided by a highly-coloured nautical
piece, the subject of which had all her colours (and
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