And how numerous were her customers, and how great the demand for her toffy, lozenges, and “humbugs” may be judged from the fact that her workmen and apprentices used up eight or nine tons of sugar every week. Yet she was only a shop-keeper, and had begun business in a very humble way; but she was persevering and industrious, and success followed. She was active and energetic, and expected those around her to be the same. Yet she was kind to them, as may be supposed, for she gave every Sunday a good dinner to fourteen old men and women on whom fortune had looked unkindly, waiting upon them herself, and never tasting her own dinner until her pensioners had dined. Regular in her own attendance at the old Church, she required her household to be regular too, though she left them little enough time to dress—possibly because her own toilette was so scant. The dress in which she presented herself at church was certainly unique for a woman of wealth. Her gown of sober stuff was well worn; a mob-cap (a fashion which came in with the French Revolution) adorned her head, over which, by way of bonnet, a brown silk handkerchief was tied. On rare—very rare—occasions, an old black silk bonnet covered all. Joshua Brookes, at odds with his clerical brethren, with his pupils, and half the world besides, was on good terms with Mrs. Clowes. Rough, prompt, and uncompromising was she; rough, irritable and unmannerly was he; both unpromising hard-husked nuts, with sweet and tender kernels. So rough, few ever suspected the soft heart; yet the woman who fed the poor before herself, and the learned clergyman who had a fancy for pigeons, and who cherished the drunken and abusive old crippled shoemaker, his father, to the last, must have intuitively known the inner life of each other. The day following Augusta Ashton’s christening, it fell within the round of the Reverend Joshua’s duty to read the burial service over a dead townswoman in the churchyard. And now occurred one of those incidents in which the ludicrous and the profane blended, and brought impulsive Joshua into disfavour. As was not unfrequently the case, he broke off in the midst of the service, left the mourners and the coffin beside the open grave, threw his legs over the low wall, and, mounting the steps into the confectioner’s shop, said, “Here, quick, dame! Give me some horehound drops for my cough.” On his entrance Mrs. Clowes broke off a narrative over which she and her shopwoman were laughing heartily, in order to reach the required drops, which went into a paper without weighing, and for which no payment was tendered. Back he strode over the church wall to resume the interrupted ceremonial.