The meal ended, Pasco Pepperill stood up and said, “Mr. What’s-your-name, I daresay you would like to look over my stores. You’ll be wanting coals, and I sell coals by the bushel. You drink cider, I daresay; I can provide you with a hogshead--or half, if that will do. If you want to do shopping--I speak against my interests--but Whiteaway deals in groceries; you’ll find his shop up the street. If there be anything he hasn’t got, and you need to go into Teignmouth, why, this is the ferry, and we charge a penny to put you across, and it is a penny back. If you desire to be polite to friends, and would like to entertain them, there are cockles and winkles, tea or coffee, to be had here, six-pence a head; but if the number were over twenty, we might come to an arrangement at fourpence-ha’penny. And if you desire a conveyance at any time, I have a cob and trap I let out at a shilling a mile, and something for the driver. And if you smoke and drink, I have--I mean, I dare-say I could provide for you tobacco and spirits that--you know--haven’t seen the Customs, and are accordingly cheap. And if you should happen to know of a timber merchant who wants a lot of oak, I’ve dropped over a hundred pounds on some prime stuff I shall sell only to such as know good oak from bad. And if you’ve any friends in the weaving trade, I do some business in wool, and am getting first-class fleeces from Dartmoor. If you can oblige me in any way like this--well, I daresay I shan’t be so prejudiced for Mr. Puddicombe.” Pasco Pepperill conducted the schoolmaster about his premises in an ostentatious manner, showed him his stores, his stable, the platform on which tea and coffee, winkles and cockles were served. He named the prices he had paid, and gave the new-comer to understand that he was a man who had plenty of money at his disposal. Then an idea occurred to Pasco. Perhaps this schoolmaster might help him with his accounts. He himself could not disentangle them and balance his books. He was shy of letting anyone else see them; but this Bramber was a complete stranger, a man whom he could reduce to dependence on himself; he had no private means, no friends in the place; he had given the man a dinner, and might make of him a very serviceable slave. “Look here,” said Pepperill in a haughty tone, “Mr. Schoolmaster, I suppose you know something of accounts and book-keeping?” “Certainly I do.” “I shouldn’t mind now and then paying you a trifle, giving you a meal, and favouring you with my support--I am churchwarden, and consequently on the committee of the National School. Me and the bishop, and the archdeacon and rector, and Whiteaway as well. I mean, I’ll stand at your back, if you will oblige me now and then, and hold your tongue.” “I will do anything I can to oblige you,” said Bramber. “And as to holding my tongue, what is it you desire of me?”