cowls,
hung up at the window, than business flowed in upon us in a perfect
torrent. First one came in for his measure, and then another. A wife
came in for a pair of red worsted boots for her bairn, but would not take
them for they had not blue fringes. A bareheaded lassie, hoping to be
handsel, threw down twopence, and asked tape at three yards for a
halfpenny. The minister sent an old black coat beneath his maid's arm,
pinned up in a towel, to get docked in the tails down into a jacket;
which I trust I did to his entire satisfaction, making it fit to a hair.
The Duke's butler himself patronized me, by sending me a coat which was
all hair-powder and pomate, to get a new neck put to it. And James
Batter, aye a staunch friend of the family, dispatched a barefoot cripple
lassie down the close to me, with a brown paper parcel, tied with skinie,
and having a memorandum letter sewed on the top of it, and wafered with a
wafer. It ran as follows; "Maister Batter has sent down, per the bearer,
with his compliments to Mr Wauch, a cuttikin of corduroy, deficient in
the instep, which please let out, as required. Maister Wauch will also
please be so good as observe that three of the buttons have sprung the
thorls, which he will be obliged to him to replace, at his earliest
convenience. Please send me a message what they may be; and have the
account made out, article for article, and duly discharged, that I may
send down the bearer with the change; and to bring me back the cuttikin
and the account, to save time and trouble. I am, dear sir, your most
obedient friend, and ever most sincerely,

"JAMES BATTER."

No wonder than we attracted customers, for our sign was the prettiest ye
ever saw, though the jacket was not just so neatly painted, as for some
sand-blind creatures not to take it for a goose. I daresay there were
fifty half-naked bairns glowring their eyes out of their heads at it,
from morning till night; and, after they all were gone to their beds,
both Nanse and me found ourselves so proud of our new situation in life,
that we slipped out in the dark by ourselves, and had a prime look at it
with a lantern.

CHAPTER SEVEN--MANSIE WAUCH AND HIS FOREWARNING

On first commencing business, I have freely confessed, I believe, that I
was unco solicitous of custom, though less from sinful, selfish motives,
than from the, I trust, laudable fear I had abo