--pah an ounce of civet, good apothecary!
Turning from thence, my steps naturally directed themselves to my own
humble apartment, where my little Highland landlady, as dapper and
as tight as ever, (for old women wear a hundred times better than the
hard-wrought seniors of the masculine sex), stood at the door, TEEDLING
to herself a Highland song as she shook a table napkin over the
fore-stair, and then proceeded to fold it up neatly for future service.

"How do you, Janet?"

"Thank ye, good sir," answered my old friend, without looking at
me; "but ye might as weel say Mrs. MacEvoy, for she is na a'body's
Shanet--umph."

"You must be MY Janet, though, for all that. Have you forgot me? Do you
not remember Chrystal Croftangry?"

The light, kind-hearted creature threw her napkin into the open door,
skipped down the stair like a fairy, three steps at once, seized me by
the hands--both hands--jumped up, and actually kissed me. I was a little
ashamed; but what swain, of somewhere inclining to sixty could resist
the advances of a fair contemporary? So we allowed the full degree
of kindness to the meeting--HONI SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSE--and then Janet
entered instantly upon business. "An ye'll gae in, man, and see your
auld lodgings, nae doubt and Shanet will pay ye the fifteen shillings
of change that ye ran away without, and without bidding Shanet good day.
But never mind" (nodding good-humouredly), "Shanet saw you were carried
for the time."

By this time we were in my old quarters, and Janet, with her bottle of
cordial in one hand and the glass in the other, had forced on me a
dram of usquebaugh, distilled with saffron and other herbs, after some
old-fashioned Highland receipt. Then was unfolded, out of many a little
scrap of paper, the reserved sum of fifteen shillings, which Janet had
treasured for twenty years and upwards.

"Here they are," she said, in honest triumph, "just the same I was
holding out to ye when ye ran as if ye had been fey. Shanet has had
siller, and Shanet has wanted siller, mony a time since that. And the
gauger has come, and the factor has come, and the butcher and baker--Cot
bless us just like to tear poor auld Shanet to pieces; but she took good
care of Mr. Croftangry's fifteen shillings."

"But what if I had never come back, Janet?"

"Och, if Shanet had heard you were dead, she would hae gien it to the
poor of the chapel, to pray for Mr. Croftangry," said Janet, crossing
herself, for she was