For, on the very first bench, these were the faces on which his eye had to rest, watching whether there was any stirring under the stagnant surface.
Right in front of him--probably because he was stone-deaf, and it was deemed more edifying to hear nothing at a short distance than at a long one--sat 'Old Maxum', as he was familiarly called, his real patronymic remaining a mystery to most persons.

A fine philological sense discerns in this cognomen an indication that the pauper patriarch had once been considered pithy and sententious in his speech; but now the weight of ninety-five years lay heavy on his tongue as well as in his ears, and he sat before the clergyman with protruded chin, and munching mouth, and eyes that seemed to look at emptiness.
Next to him sat Poll Fodge--known to the magistracy of her county as Mary Higgins--a one-eyed woman, with a scarred and seamy face, the most notorious rebel in the workhouse, said to have once thrown her broth over the master's coat-tails, and who, in spite of nature's apparent safeguards against that contingency, had contributed to the perpetuation of the Fodge characteristics in the person of a small boy, who was behaving naughtily on one of the back benches.

Miss Fodge fixed her one sore eye on Mr.Barton with a sort of hardy defiance.
Beyond this member of the softer sex, at the end of the bench, sat 'Silly Jim', a young man afflicted with hydrocephalus, who rolled his head from side to side, and gazed at the point of his nose.

These were the supporters of Old Maxum on his right.
On his left sat Mr.Fitchett, a tall fellow, who had once been a footman in the Oldinport family, and in that giddy elevation had enunciated a contemptuous opinion of boiled beef, which had been traditionally handed down in Shepperton as the direct cause of his ultimate reduction to pauper commons.

His calves were now shrunken, and his hair was grey without the aid of powder; but he still carried his chin as if he were conscious of a stiff cravat; he set his dilapidated hat on with a knowing inclination towards the left ear; and when he was on field-work, he carted and uncarted the manure with a sort of flunkey grace, the ghost of that jaunty demeanour with which he used to usher in my lady's morning visitors.