Independent of the quality of the meat, it was none the better, even then, for having been kept.

The women scented this; but Peckaby, and Peckaby's wife, who was always in the shop with her husband on a Saturday night, protested and vowed that their customers' noses were mistaken; that the meat would be perfectly good and fresh on the Sunday, and on the Monday too, if they liked to keep it so long.

The women, somewhat doubtfully giving ear to the assurance, knowing that the alternative was that or none, bought the meat and took it home.

On Sunday morning they found the meat was--anything you may imagine.

It was neither cookable nor eatable; and their anger against Peckaby was not diminished by a certain fact which oozed out to them; namely, that Peckaby himself did not cut _his_ Sunday's dinner off the meat in his shop, but sent to buy it of one of the Deerham butchers.