The sabres clanked so often and the spurs jingled so much in the verger's front parlour, that the neighbours--instigated, perhaps, less by their friendly feelings and their virtue than their jealousy--thought it time to speak to Robert Hall about it, and to ask him if he knew what he was doing, and what seed he was sowing, to be reaped in shame and disgrace. Wybrow, the mourning jeweller--who made very tasty little designs of yews and willows out of dead people's hair--declared that his shop was never so full as his neighbour's; but then either the officers had no dead relations, or did not care for such melancholy _souvenirs_. Heelball, who had compiled a neat little handbook of the cathedral, and who furnished anyone who wanted them with "rubbings" of the crusaders' tombs, declared that the "milingtary" never patronised him; "perhaps," he added, "because I ain't young and pretty," therein decidedly speaking the truth, as he was sixty and deformed. Stothard, the tombstone sculptor, said nothing. He was supposed to be madly in love with Martha Hall, and it was noticed that when the young officers went clanking by his yard he took up his heaviest mallet and punished the stone under treatment fearfully. The hints and remonstrances had but little effect on Robert Hall. Not that he was careless about his daughter. "Happy-go-lucky" in other matters, he would have resented deeply any slight or insult offered to her. But he knew her better than anyone else, knew her passionless, calculating, ambitious nature, and had every confidence in it. That confidence was not misplaced. Martha was polite to all who visited her as customers; talked and joked with them within bounds, displayed her handiwork, and sold it to the best advantage; taking care always to have ready money before she parted with it ("Can't think how she does it, 'pon my soul I can't!" was the cry in barracks. "Screwed two quid out of me for this d--d thing, down on the nail, by Jove! First thing I've had in the place that hasn't been chalked up, give you my word!") but never allowed any approach to undue familiarity. She was declared by her military customers to be "capital fun;" but it was perfectly understood amongst them that she "wouldn't stand any nonsense." So the shop was filled, and her trade throve, and her enemies and neighbours, however much they might hint and whisper in her detraction, had nothing tangible to narrate against her.