and the Leweses in connection with the letting of the house, giving interesting glimpses into the domesticities of the latter. Their habits here, as in London, were of clockwork regularity, household arrangements being expected to run on wheels. "Everything," writes George Eliot, "goes on slowly at Shottermill, and the mode of narration is that typified in 'This is the house that Jack built.' But there is an exquisite stillness in the sunshine and a sense of distance from London hurry, which encourages the growth of patience.
"Mrs. G's" (their one servant) "pace is proportionate to the other slownesses, but she impresses me as a worthy person, and her cooking—indeed, all her attendance on us—is of satisfactory quality. But we find the awkwardness of having only one person in the house, as well as the advantage (this latter being quietude). The butcher does not bring the meat, everybody grudges selling new milk, eggs are scarce, and an expedition we made yesterday in search of fowls, showed us nothing more hopeful than some chickens six weeks old, which the good woman observed were sometimes 'eaten by the gentry with asparagus.' Those eccentric people, the gentry!
"But have we not been reading about the siege of Paris all the winter, and shall we complain while we get excellent bread and butter and many etceteras? . . . Mrs S kindly sent us a dish of asparagus, which we ate (without the skinny chicken) and had a feast.
"You will imagine that we are as fond of eating as Friar Tuck—I am enlarging so on our commissariat. But you will also infer that we have no great evils to complain of, since I make so much of the small."
