Dixon was strongly attached to the rector, so much so, that to him neither the rector nor the things belonging to the rector, whether animate or inanimate, could do wrong.  He had a watch, and even though it might not be one of the best, a watch was no small acquisition to a working man of his time.  He did not live in the days of the three-and-sixpenny marvel, or of the half-crown wonder, now to be found in the pocket of almost every schoolboy.  Dixon’s watch was of the kind worn by the well-known Captain Cuttle, which Dickens describes as being “a silver watch, which was so big and so tight in the pocket that it came out like a bung” when its owner drew it from the depths to see the time.  It must, consequently, have cost many half-crowns, but yet as timekeeper it was somewhat of a failure.  In this, too, it resembled that of the famous captain of which its proud possessor, as everybody knows, used to say, “Put you back half-an-hour every morning, and about another quarter towards the afternoon, and you’ve a watch that can be equalled by a few and excelled by none.”  Dixon, therefore, when asked the time of day, was usually obliged to go through an arithmetical calculation before he could reply.

On Sunday, however, all was different; he then had no hesitation whatever in at once declaring the correct time.  For every Sunday morning he put his watch by the rector’s clock, and it mattered not how far the rector’s clock might be fast or slow, what that clock said was the true time for Dixon.  And though the remonstrances of the parishioners might be loud and long, they were all in vain, for according to the rector’s clock he rang the church bells, and so the services commenced.  He loved the rector, therefore the rector’s clock could not be wrong.  Evidently Dixon was capable of strong affection, a quality of no mean moral order.

Before the enclosure of parishes was common, and their various fields separated by hedges or other fences; before, too, the ordnance survey with its many calculations was an accomplished fact, much more measuring of land in connection with work done each year was required than at present.  It was a necessity, therefore, that each village should have in or near it a man skilled in the science of calculation.  Consequently, the acquirement of figures was fostered, and so in the earlier part of the nineteenth century almost every parish could produce a man supposed to be, and who probably was, great in arithmetic.  Catwick’s calculator was Dixon, and he was generally thought by his co-villagers to be as learned a one as any other, if not more so.

He had, however, a great rival at Long Riston.  This was one Richard Fewson, who, like Dixon, was clerk of his parish; but while Dixon was a shopkeeper Fewson kept the village school.