Jim had not in the least anticipated the course Oliver Constable was taking; so far from it, Jim had entertained a project of risking his bachelor savings and enabling a favourite nephew who was already a tolerably successful master baker in a neighbouring village, to buy the Constables’ business, and carry it on in Friarton with the further help of Jim’s experience. But, to do the old man justice, he would have resigned this private plan with less reluctance if he had been satisfied with Oliver Constable’s rearing, or with the young man personally. Jim listened and reflected, standing all alive and vigilant with his hands clasped behind him. ‘Peter Constable kneaded his batch by my side, many’s the day, when we were lads. He could set the sponge better than I could, when we were fellow-apprentices to his father. Peter’s mind was in the baking business from the first. Now young Oliver has been bred different, and his mind has been in his books—that’s what makes me mistrustful of his proposal, and not altogether agreeable to it, though it comes from his father’s son and does him no discredit—I’m bound to say,’ thought Jim. ‘’Arry Reddock can look out for himself, and I’m not pledged to take him up, if I were sure of this turn of affairs. But young Oliver’s an amature—that’s what he is—and no good comes of amatures. He’ll make ducks and drakes of as fine and solid a business as ever three generations got together; and he’s a crotchety lad, too. Hear to him, what he’s telling the lads! about everything being above-board—as if there ever was a trade without its secrets—and of his not passing over a man’s shirking his work and disobeying orders, as if any tradesman—be he ever so flourishing—can afford in them times to quarrel with his best hand, maybe, because he has a mind of his own, or will go on the spree nows and thens, or is not careful to make his batches every bit as light and sweet as they may be. Master Oliver has to find this is a world in which a man must live and let live and act conformable to circumstances. ‘He ought to be rare and perfect as a master that demands a perfect servant, and them is not the days for that uncommon commodity when the servants are like to have the ruling of the masters—instead of the masters the picking and choosing of the servants. This young fellow has to learn life out of college, and he had as well learn his trade at the same time before he takes upon him to be a master baker.’ But Jim Hull kept his counsel in the meanwhile. It was the foremost man of the group of bakers who spoke out in reply to Oliver. ‘Do you mean to say, sir,’ said the man, not disrespectfully, but with a flavour of offence in his tone, ‘that there are to be a set of fresh arrangements made here, and that we are to consent beforehand—without knowing what we are doing—to a whole lot of new-fangled ways?’ And there was a murmur of assent to the objection from the men behind him.