Looking at him ensconced behind the bright-edged Bible at early morning prayers, the servants believed in the advantages derivable from a correct life, and made an exception in their master's favour to the doom of Dives. By his own measure he meted the doings of others, and invariably arose considerably self-refreshed from the mensuration. Hodge, ploughman, consigned to the cage after a brawl with Giles, hedger, consequent upon a too liberal consumption of flat and muddy ale at The Three Horseshoes, known generally as The Shoes, and brought up for judgment before the bench, pleading "a moog too much" in extenuation, might count on scanty commiseration from the magistrate, who never exceeded his four glasses of remarkably sound claret. Levi Hinde, gipsy and tramp, arraigned for stealing a loaf from a baker's shop--as he said, to save the life of his starving child--impressed not one whit the portly chairman of the Amherst branch of the County Bank. Mr. Carruthers never got drunk, and never committed theft; and that there could be any possible temptation for other people so to act, was beyond the grasp of his most respectable imagination. A man of his stamp generally shows to the least advantage in his domestic relations. Worshipped from a distance by outsiders, who, when occasion forces them into the presence, approach, metaphorically, in the Siamese fashion, on hands and knees, there is usually a good deal too much Grand Lama-like mystery and dignity about the recipient of all this homage to render him agreeable to those with whom he is brought into daily contact. Mr. Carruthers was not an exception to the rule. He had a notion that love, except the extremely respectable but rather weak regard felt by mothers towards their infants, was a ridiculous boy-and-girl sentiment, which never really came to anything, nor could be considered worthy of notice until the feminine mind was imbued with a certain amount of reverence for the object of her affection. Mr. Carruthers had never read Tennyson (in common with his class, he was extremely severe upon poets in general, looking upon them not merely as fools, but as idle mischievous fools, who might be better employed in earning a decent livelihood, say as carters or turnpike-men); but he was thoroughly impressed with the idea that "woman is the lesser man," and he felt that any open display of affection on his part towards his wife might militate against what he considered entirely essential to his domestic happiness--his "being looked up to." He was in the habit of treating his wife in ordinary matters of social intercourse very much as he treated the newly-appointed justice of the peace at the meetings of the magisterial bench, viz. as a person whose position was now recognized by the laws of society as equal to their own, but who must nevertheless feel inwardly that between him and Mr. Carruthers of Poynings there was really a great gulf fixed, the bridging of which,