These always took him to the market first, a crowded and very narrow quarter then, where he always had a great host of commissions, at very small figures, to execute. His honesty was so broadly known that it was become quite an onerous gift, as happens in much higher grades of life. Folk, all along both his roads of travel, naturally took great advantage of it; being certain that he would spend their money quite as gingerly as his own, and charge them no more than he was compelled by honesty towards himself to charge.
Farmers, butchers, poulterers, hucksters, chandlers, and grocers--black, yellow, and green--all knew Zacchary Cripps, and paid him the compliment of asking fifty per cent. above what they meant, or even hoped to take. Of this the Carrier was well aware, and upon the whole it pleased him. The triumph each time of rubbing down, by friction of tongue and chafe of spirit, eighteen-pence into a shilling, although it might be but a matter of course, never lost any of its charms for him. His brisk eyes sparkled as he pulled off his hat, and made the most learned annotations there--if learning is (as generally happens) the knowledge of what nobody else can read.
But now, before he had filled the great leathern apron of his capacities--which being full, his hat had no room for any further entries--a thing came to pass which startled him; so far at least as the road and the world had left him the power of starting. He saw his own brother, Leviticus, standing in friendly talk with a rabbit-man; a man whose reputation was not at a hopeless distance beyond reproach; a man who had been three times in prison--whether he ought or ought not to have been, this is a difficult point to debate. His friends contended that he ought not--if so, he of course was wrong to go there. His enemies vowed that he ought to be there--if so, he could rightly be nowhere else. The man got the benefit of both opinions, in a powerfully negative condition of confidence on the part of the human brotherhood. But for all that, there were bigger rogues to be found in Oxford.
Cripps, however, as the head of the family, having seigneurial rights by birth--as well as, in his own opinion, force of superior intellect--saw, and at once discharged, his duty. No taint of poached rabbits must lie, for a moment, on the straightforward path of the Crippses. Zacchary, therefore, held up one hand, as a warning to Tickuss to say no more, until he could get at him--for just at this moment a dead lock arose, through a fight of four women about a rotten egg--but when that had lapsed into hysterics, the Carrier struggled to his brother's elbow.