Had any stranger driven up to the front door, he might have hammered away with the narrow knocker--there was no bell--for half an hour before making any one hear, and then probably it would have been by the accident of the servant going by the passage, and not by dint of noise.

The household lived in the back part of the house.
There was a parlour well furnished, sweet with flowers placed there fresh daily, and with the odour of those in the garden, whose scent came in at the ever open window; but no one sat in it from week's end to week's end.
The whole life of the inmates passed in two back rooms--a sitting-room and kitchen.
With some slight concessions to the times only, Farmer M---- led the life his fathers led before him, and farmed his tenancy upon the same principles.

He did not, indeed, dine with the labourers, but he ate very much the same food as they did.

Some said he would eat what no labourer or servant would touch; and, as he had stated, drank the same smallest of small beer.

His wife made a large quantity of home-made wine every year, of which she partook in a moderate degree, and which was the liquor usually set before visitors.