but cheerie thing.
You're a rale weel-aff woman, I can tell ye," and the woman would go
home to dream of one day having a room like Mrs. Sinclair's, and to tell
her neighbors of the great "grandeur" that the Sinclair's possessed,
whilst Nellie would set to, and rub and polish those drawers and that
mirror, and the stuff-bottomed chairs till they shone like the sun upon
a moorland tarn, and she herself felt like dropping from sheer
exhaustion.

She even took to telling the neighbors sometimes, when they came on
those visits that "working folk should a' hae coal-houses, for coal kept
ablow the beds makes an awfu' mess o' the ticks."

"Oh, weel," would be the reply, made with the usual sigh of resignation,
"I hae had a house a gey lang while now, an' I dinna think I've ever
wanted ony sic newfangled things as that."

"That's what's wrang," Mrs. Sinclair would reply. "We dinna want them.
If we did, we'd soon get them. What way would the gentry hae a' thae
things, an' us hae nane?"

"That's a' richt, Nellie," would be the reply. "We wadna ken what to do
wi' what the gentry has got. They're rich an' can afford it, an' forby
they need them an' we don't. I think I'm fine as I am."

"Fine as ye are!" with bitter scorn in her tones. "Ye'll never be fine
wi' a mind like that."

"Wheesht, woman Nellie! You're no feart. Dinna talk like that. We micht
a' be strucken doon dead!"

This usually ended the discussion, for Scots people generally--and the
workers especially--are always on very intimate terms with the Deity,
and know the pains and penalties of too intimate allusions to His power.

Yet, with all her discontent, Mrs. Sinclair found life very much easier
than it had been, for now that she had some of the boys started to work,
she had made her house "respectable," and added many little comforts,
besides having a "bit pound or twa lyin' in the store." So she looked
ahead with more hope and a more serene heart. Her children were well-fed
and clothed, and the old days of hunger and struggling were over, she
thought. Geordie was now taking a day off in the middle of the week to
rest, as there was no need for him to slave and toil every day as he had
done in the past. After all it would only be a very few years till he
would no longer be able to work at all.

Rosy looked the future then, as Mrs. Sinclair, on the day on which young
Robert went down the pit, showed off her room "grandeur" to an admiring
neighbor.

"My, wh