by a farmer's threshing-mill. However, I got
myself properly suited;--but ye shall hear.

Our neighbour Mrs Grassie, a widow woman, unco intimate with our wife,
and very attentive to Benjie when he had the chincough, had a far-away
cousin of the name of Glen, that held out among the howes of the
Lammermoor hills--a distant part of the country, ye observe. Auld Glen,
a decent-looking body of a creature, had come in with his sheltie about
some private matters of business--such as the buying of a horse, or
something to that effect, where he could best fall in with it, either at
our fair, or the Grassmarket, or suchlike; so he had up-pitting, free of
expense, from Mrs Grassie, on account of his relationship; Glen being
second cousin to Mrs Grassie's brother's wife, which is deceased. I
might, indeed, have mentioned, that our neighbour herself had been twice
married, and had the misery of seeing out both her gudemen; but such was
the will of fate, and she bore up with perfect resignation.

Having made a bit warm dinner ready, for she was a tidy body, and knew
what was what, she thought she could not do better than ask in a
reputable neighbour to help her friend to eat it, and take a cheerer with
him; as, maybe, being a stranger here, he would not like to use the
freedom of drinking by himself--a custom which is at the best an unsocial
one--especially with none but women-folk near him; so she did me the
honour to make choice of me--though I say it, who should not say it;--and
when we got our jug filled for the second time, and began to grow better
acquainted, ye would really wonder to see how we became merry, and
cracked away just like two pen-guns. I asked him, ye see, about sheep
and cows, and corn and hay, and ploughing and threshing, and horses and
carts, and fallow land, and lambing-time, and har'st, and making cheese
and butter, and selling eggs, and curing the sturdie, and the snifters,
and the batts, and such like;--and he, in his turn, made enquiry
regarding broad and narrow cloth, Kilmarnock cowls, worsted comforters,
Shetland hose, mittens, leather-caps, stuffing and padding, metal and
mule buttons, thorls, pocket-linings, serge, twist, buckram, shaping and
sewing, back-splaying, cloth-runds, goosing the labroad, botkins, black
thread, patent shears, measuring, and all the other particulars belonging
to our trade, which he said, at long and last after we had joked
together, was a power better one than the farm