He did not patronise the Duke's Head.

It was too new-fangled for him, and he suspected his arch enemy, Mr.Abraham Boosey, of putting a rat or two into the old beer to make it "draw," which accounted for its being so "hard." But Mr.Abraham Boosey was the undertaker, and he, Thomas Reid, was the sexton, and it did not do to express these views too loudly, lest perchance Mr.Boosey should, just in his play, construct a coffin or two just too big for the regulation grave, and thereby leave Mr.Reid in the lurch.

For the undertaker and the gravedigger are as necessary to each other, as Mr.Reid maintained, as a pair of blackbirds in a hedge.
But the spring was "forrard t'year" and the weather was consequently even more detestable than usual at that season.

The roads were heavy.

The rain seemed never weary of pouring down and the wind never tired of blowing.
The wet and leafless creepers beat against the walls of the cottage, and the chimneys smoked both there and at the vicarage.