y. "How much shall I give
you the day?"

"Auchty pund, sir, if you please--the lave when you like; I ken ye, Mr.
Miller."

While counting her the notes, the purchaser said slyly to her:

"There's more than a hundred cran in the cutter, my woman."

"A little, sir," replied the vender; "but, ere I could count them till
ye by baskets, they would lose seven or eight cran in book,* your gain,
my loss."

*Bulk.

"You are a vara intelligent young person," said Mr. Miller, gravely.

"Ye had measured them wi' your walking-stick, sir; there's just ae scale
ye didna wipe off, though ye are a carefu' mon, Mr. Miller; sae I laid
the bait for ye an' fine ye took it."

Miller took out his snuff-box, and tapping it said:

"Will ye go into partnership with me, my dear?"

"Ay, sir!" was the reply. "When I'm aulder an' ye're younger."

At this moment the four merchants, believing it useless to disguise
their co-operation, returned to see what could be done.

"We shall give you a guinea a barrel."

"Why, ye offered her twenty-two shillings before."

"That we never did, Mr. Miller."

"Haw! haw!" went Flucker.

Christie looked down and blushed.

Eyes met eyes, and without a word spoken all was comprehended and
silently approved. There was no nonsense uttered about morality in
connection with dealing.

Mr. Miller took an enormous pinch of snuff, and drew for the benefit of
all present the following inference:

MR. MILLER'S APOTHEGM.

"Friends and neighbors! when a man's heed is gray with age and thoucht
_(pause)_ he's just fit to go to schule to a young lass o' twenty."

There was a certain middle-aged fishwife, called Beeny Liston, a tenant
of Christie Johnstone's; she had not paid her rent for some time, and
she had not been pressed for it; whether this, or the whisky she was in
the habit of taking, rankled in her mind, certain it is she had always
an ill word for her landlady.

She now met her, envied her success, and called out in a coarse tone:

"Oh, ye're a gallant quean; ye'll be waur than ever the noo."

"What's wrang, if ye please?" said the Johnstone, sharply.

Reader, did you ever see two fallow bucks commence a duel?

They strut round, eight yards apart, tails up, look carefully another
way to make the other think it all means nothing, and, being both
equally sly, their horns come together as if by concert.

Even so commenced this duel of tongues between these two heroines.

Beeny Liston, l