When George Banks was nearly thirty years of age, he married. He had always been happy, except for one great drawback: and now he hoped to be happier than ever; and, indeed, he was. The drawback was that his father drank. Banks had been brought up to expect a little property which should make life easy to him; but, while still a youth, he gave up all thought of any property but such as he might earn. He saw every thing going to ruin at home; and he and his sister, finding that their father was irreclaimable, resolved to go out and work for themselves, and for their mother while she lived. The sister went out to service, and Banks became a farm-laborer. Their father's pride was hurt at their sinking below the station they were born to; but they were obliged to disregard his anger when an honest maintenance was in question. There was a smaller drawback, by the way; Banks was rather deaf, and he thought the deafness increased a little; but it was not enough to stand in the way of his employment as a laborer; he could hear the sermon in church; and Betsy did not mind it, so he did not. He had a good master in old Mr. Wilkes, a large farmer in a southern county. Mr. Wilkes paid him 12_s._ a week all the year round, and £5 for the harvest month. For some years Banks laid by a good deal of money; so did Betsy, who was a housemaid at Mr. Wilkes's. When they became engaged, they had between them £50 laid by. Banks took a cottage of three rooms, with nearly half a rood of garden-ground. They furnished their house really well, with substantial new furniture, and enough of it. In those days of high prices it made a great cut out of their money: but they agreed that they should never repent it. Banks had the privilege of a run on the common for his cow, and of as much peat as he chose to cut and carry for fuel. He had seen the consequences of intemperance in his father's case, and he was a water-drinker. He seldom touched even beer, except at harvest-time, when his wife brewed for him, that they might keep clear of the public-house.