hurry, or my grief for
poor Mungo, or maybe from both, I found on the Saturday night, when the
clothes were sent home on the arm of Tammie Bodkin, whom I was obliged to
hire by way of foresman, that some awful mistake had occurred--the dress
of the one having been made for the back of the other, the one being long
and tall, the other thick and short; so that Maister Peter Pole's cuffs
did not reach above half-way down his arms, and the tails ended at the
small of his back, rendering him a perfect fright; while Maister Watty
Firkin's new coat hung on him like a dreadnought, the sleeves coming over
the nebs of his fingers, and the hainch buttons hanging down between his
heels, making him resemble a mouse below a firlot. With some persuasion,
however, there being but small difference in the value of the cloths, the
one being a west of England bottle-green, and the other a Manchester
blue, I caused them to niffer, and hushed up the business, which, had
they been obstreperous, would have made half the parish of Dalkeith stand
on end.

After poor Mungo had been beneath the mools, I daresay a good month,
Benjie, as he was one forenoon diverting himself dozing his top in the
room where they sleeped, happened to drive it in below the bed, where,
scrambling in on his hands and feet, he found a half sheet of paper
written over in Mungo's hand-writing, the which he brought to me; and, on
looking over it, I found it jingled in metre like the Psalms of David.

Having no skeel in these matters, I sent up the close for James Batter,
who, being a member of the fifteenpence a-quarter subscription book-club,
had read a power of all sorts of things, sacred and profane. James, as
he was humming it over with his specs on his beak, gave now and then a
thump on his thigh, "Prime, prime, man; fine, prime, good, capital!" and
so on, which astonished me much, kenning who had written it--a callant
that had sleeped with our Benjie, and could not have shaped a pair of
leggins though we had offered him the crown of the three kingdoms.

Seeing what it was thought of by one who knew what was what, and could
distinguish the difference between a B and a bull's foot, I judged it
necessary for me to take a copy of it; which, for the benefit of them
that like poems, I do not scruple to tag to the tail of this chapter.

Oh, wad that my time were ower but,
Wi' this wintry sleet and snaw,
That I might see our house again
I' the bon