family. Clem was leaning lazily forward when
Archie first saw him. Presently he leaned nonchalantly back; and that
deadly instrument, the maiden, was suddenly unmasked in profile. Though
not quite in the front of the fashion (had anybody cared!), certain
artful Glasgow mantua-makers, and her own inherent taste, had arrayed
her to great advantage. Her accoutrement was, indeed, a cause of
heart-burning, and almost of scandal, in that infinitesimal kirk
company. Mrs. Hob had said her say at Cauldstaneslap. "Daftlike!" she
had pronounced it. "A jaiket that'll no meet! Whaur's the sense of a
jaiket that'll no button upon you, if it should come to be weet? What
do ye ca' thir things? Demmy brokens, d'ye say? They'll be brokens wi' a
vengeance or ye can win back! Weel, I have naething to do wi' it--it's
no good taste." Clem, whose purse had thus metamorphosed his sister, and
who was not insensible to the advertisement, had come to the rescue with
a "Hoot, woman! What do you ken of good taste that has never been to the
ceety?" And Hob, looking on the girl with pleased smiles, as she timidly
displayed her finery in the midst of the dark kitchen, had thus ended
the dispute: "The cutty looks weel," he had said, "and it's no very like
rain. Wear them the day, hizzie; but it's no a thing to make a practice
o'." In the breasts of her rivals, coming to the kirk very conscious of
white under-linen, and their faces splendid with much soap, the sight of
the toilet had raised a storm of varying emotion, from the mere
unenvious admiration that was expressed in a long-drawn "Eh!" to the
angrier feeling that found vent in an emphatic "Set her up!" Her frock
was of straw-coloured jaconet muslin, cut low at the bosom and short at
the ankle, so as to display her _demi-broquins_ of Regency violet,
crossing with many straps upon a yellow cobweb stocking. According to
the pretty fashion in which our grandmothers did not hesitate to appear,
and our great-aunts went forth armed for the pursuit and capture of our
great-uncles, the dress was drawn up so as to mould the contour of both
breasts, and in the nook between, a cairngorm brooch maintained it.
Here, too, surely in a very enviable position, trembled the nosegay of
primroses. She wore on her shoulders--or rather, on her back and not her
shoulders, which it scarcely passed--a French coat of sarsenet, tied in
front with Margate braces, and of the same colour with her violet shoes.
About her face clu