ver my
'prenticeship with Mr Remnant, I took up the corner shop at the Cross,
facing the Tolbooth; and having had it adorned in a befitting manner,
about a month before the summer fair thereafter, I opened it on that day,
with an excellent assortment of goods, the best, both for taste and
variety, that had ever been seen in the burgh of Gudetown; and the winter
following, finding by my books that I was in a way to do so, I married my
wife: she was daughter to Mrs Broderip, who kept the head inn in Irville,
and by whose death, in the fall of the next year, we got a nest egg,
that, without a vain pretension, I may say we have not failed to lay
upon, and clock to some purpose.

Being thus settled in a shop and in life, I soon found that I had a part
to perform in the public world; but I looked warily about me before
casting my nets, and therefore I laid myself out rather to be entreated
than to ask; for I had often heard Mr Remnant observe, that the nature of
man could not abide to see a neighbour taking place and preferment of his
own accord. I therefore assumed a coothy and obliging demeanour towards
my customers and the community in general; and sometimes even with the
very beggars I found a jocose saying as well received as a bawbee,
although naturally I dinna think I was ever what could be called a funny
man, but only just as ye would say a thought ajee in that way. Howsever,
I soon became, both by habit and repute, a man of popularity in the town,
in so much that it was a shrewd saying of old James Alpha, the
bookseller, that "mair gude jokes were cracked ilka day in James Pawkie's
shop, than in Thomas Curl, the barber's, on a Saturday night."

CHAPTER II--A KITHING

I could plainly discern that the prudent conduct which I had adopted
towards the public was gradually growing into effect. Disputative
neighbours made me their referee, and I became, as it were, an oracle
that was better than the law, in so much that I settled their
controversies without the expense that attends the same. But what
convinced me more than any other thing that the line I pursued was
verging towards a satisfactory result, was, that the elderly folk that
came into the shop to talk over the news of the day, and to rehearse the
diverse uncos, both of a national and a domestic nature, used to call me
bailie and my lord; the which jocular derision was as a symptom and
foretaste within their spirits of what I was ordained to be. Thu