Old Wilson had not chosen the tailor's house as his home on account of
any comforts it might be expected to afford him. He had his own
reasons for not quitting Wythburn after he had received his very
unequivocal "sneck posset." "Better a wee bush," he would say, "than
na bield". Shelter certainly the tailor's home afforded him; and that
was all that he required for the present. Wilson had not been long in
the tailor's cottage before Sim seemed to grow uneasy under a fresh
anxiety, of which his lodger was the subject. Wilson's manners had
obviously undergone a change. His early smoothness, his slavering
glibness, had disappeared. He was now as bitter of speech as he had
formerly been conciliatory. With Sim and his troubles, real and
imaginary, he was not at all careful to exhibit sympathy. "Weel, weel,
ye must lie heids and thraws wi' poverty, like Jock an' his mither";
or, "If ye canna keep geese ye mun keep gezlins."

Sim was in debt to his landlord, and over the idea of ejectment from
his little dwelling the tailor would brood day and night. Folks said
he was going crazed about it. None the less was Sim's distress as
poignant as if the grounds for it had been more real. "Haud thy
bletherin' gab," Wilson said one day; "because ye have to be cannie
wi' the cream ye think ye must surely be clemm'd." Salutary as some of
the Scotsman's comments may have been, it was natural that the change
in his manners should excite surprise among the dalespeople. The good
people expressed themselves as "fairly maizelt" by the transformation.
What did it all mean? There was surely something behind it.

The barbarity of Wilson's speech was especially malicious when
directed against the poor folks with whom he lived, and who, being
conscious of how essential he was to the stability of the household,
were largely at his mercy. It happened on one occasion that when
Wilson returned to the cottage after a day's absence, he found Sim's
daughter weeping over the fire.

"What's now?" he asked. "Have ye nothing in the kail?"

Rotha signified that his supper was ready.

"Thou limmer," said Wilson, in his thin shriek, "how long 'ul thy dool
last? It's na mair to see a woman greet than to see a goose gang
barefit."

Ralph Ray called at the tailor's cottage the morning after this, and
found Sim suffering under violent excitement, of which Wilson's
behavior to Rotha had been the cause. The insults offered to himself
he had taken with a wince,