The American Senator | Page 2

is
really an enterprising man in his way and who has looked about in
every direction for new sources of business, becomes taciturn for a

while and forgets to smile upon comers; Mr. Ribbs, the butcher, tells
his wife that it is out of the question that she and the children should
take that long-talked-of journey to the sea-coast; and Mr. Gregory
Masters, the well-known old-established attorney of Dillsborough,
whispers to some confidential friend that he might as well take down
his plate and shut up his house. But in a month or two all that is
forgotten, and new hopes spring up even in Dillsborough; Mr.
Runciman at the Bush is putting up new stables for hunting-horses, that
being the special trade for which he now finds that there is an opening;
Mrs. Ribbs is again allowed to suggest Mare-Slocumb; and Mr.
Masters goes on as he has done for the last forty years, making the best
he can of a decreasing business.
Dillsborough is built chiefly of brick, and is, in its own way, solid
enough. The Bush, which in the time of the present landlord's father
was one of the best posting inns on the road, is not only substantial, but
almost handsome. A broad coach way, cut through the middle of the
house, leads into a spacious, well-kept, clean yard, and on each side of
the coach way there are bay windows looking into the street,--the one
belonging to the commercial parlour, and the other to the so-called
coffee-room. But the coffee-room has in truth fallen away from its
former purposes, and is now used for a farmer's ordinary on market
days, and other similar purposes. Travellers who require the use of a
public sitting-room must all congregate in the commercial parlour at
the Bush. So far the interior of the house has fallen from its past
greatness. But the exterior is maintained with much care. The
brickwork up to the eaves is well pointed, fresh, and comfortable to
look at. In front of the carriage-way swings on two massive supports
the old sign of the Bush, as to which it may be doubted whether even
Mr. Runciman himself knows that it has swung there, or been displayed
in some fashion, since it was the custom for the landlord to beat up
wine to freshen it before it was given to the customers to drink. The
church, too, is of brick--though the tower and chancel are of stone. The
attorney's house is of brick, which shall not be more particularly
described now as many of the scenes which these pages will have to
describe were acted there; and almost the entire High Street in the
centre of the town was brick also.

But the most remarkable house in Dillsborough was one standing in a
short thoroughfare called Hobbs Gate, leading down by the side of the
Bush Inn from the market-place to Church Square, as it is called. As
you pass down towards the church this house is on the right hand, and
it occupies with its garden the whole space between the market-place
and Church Square. But though the house enjoys the privilege of a
large garden,--so large that the land being in the middle of a town
would be of great value were it not that Dillsborough is in its
decadence,--still it stands flush up to the street upon which the front
door opens. It has an imposing flight of stone steps guarded by iron
rails leading up to it, and on each side of the door there is a row of three
windows, and on the two upper stories rows of seven windows. Over
the door there is a covering, on which there are grotesquely-formed,
carved wooden faces; and over the centre of each window, let into the
brickwork, is a carved stone. There are also numerous underground
windows, sunk below the earth and protected by iron railings.
Altogether the house is one which cannot fail to attract attention; and in
the brickwork is clearly marked the date, 1701,--not the very best
period for English architecture as regards beauty, but one in which
walls and roofs, ceilings and buttresses, were built more substantially
than they are to-day. This was the only house in Dillsborough which
had a name of its own, and it was called Hoppet Hall, the Dillsborough
chronicles telling that it had been originally built for and inhabited by
the Hoppet family. The only Hoppet now left in Dillsborough is old Joe
Hoppet, the ostler at the Bush; and the house, as was well known, had
belonged to some member of the Morton family for the last hundred
years at least. The garden and ground it stands upon comprise three
acres, all of which are surrounded by a high brick wall, which is