was the very sparing employment the two he creatures gave to the sex usually deemed so indispensable in household matters.  At first indeed, they had no woman servant at all.  But this created such horror that Parson Dale ventured a hint upon the matter, which Riccabocca took in very good part, and an old woman was forthwith engaged, after some bargaining—­at three shillings a week—­to wash and scrub as much as she liked during the daytime.  She always returned to her own cottage to sleep.  The man servant, who was styled in the neighborhood “Jackeymo,” did all else for his master—­smoothed his room, dusted his papers, prepared his coffee, cooked his dinner, brushed his clothes, and cleaned his pipes, of which Riccabocca had a large collection.  But however close a man’s character, it generally creeps out in driblets; and on many little occasions the Italian had shown acts of kindness, and, on some more rare occasions, even of generosity, which had served to silence his calumniators, and by degrees he had established a very fair reputation—­suspected, it is true, of being a little inclined to the Black Art, and of a strange inclination to starve Jackeymo and himself,—­in other respects harmless enough.

Signor Riccabocca had become very intimate, as we have seen, at the Parsonage.  But not so at the Hall.  For though the Squire was inclined to be very friendly to all his neighbors—­he was, like most country gentlemen, rather easily huffed.  Riccabocca had, if with great politeness, still with great obstinacy, refused Mr. Hazeldean’s earlier invitations to dinner; and when the Squire found that the Italian rarely declined to dine at the Parsonage, he was offended in one of his weak points—­viz., his regard for the honor of the hospitality of Hazeldean Hall—­and he ceased altogether invitations so churlishly rejected.  Nevertheless, as it was impossible for the Squire, however huffed, to bear malice, he now and then reminded Riccabocca of his existence by presents of game, and would have called on him more often than he did, but that Riccabocca received him with such excessive politeness that the blunt country gentleman felt shy and put out, and used to say, that “to call on Riccabocca was as bad as going to court.”

But I left Dr. Riccabocca on the high-road.  By this time he has ascended a narrow path that winds by the side of the cascade, he has passed a trellis-work covered with vines, from the which Jacheymo has positively succeeded in making what he calls wine—­a liquid, indeed, that, if the cholera had been popularly known in those days, would have soured the mildest member of the Board of Health; for Squire Hazeldean, though a robust man, who daily carried off his bottle of port with impunity, having once rashly tasted it, did not recover the effect till he had had a bill from the apothecary as long as his own arm.  Passing this trellis, Dr. Riccabocca entered upon the terrace, with its stone pavement smoothed and trim as hands