to the lassie's marriage with
Sam'l Todd, and the knocking at the door was part of the ceremony.
Five minutes afterwards Joey returned to beg a moment of me in the
passage; when I, too, got my invitation. The lad had just received,
with an expression of polite surprise, though he knew he could claim it
as his right, a slice of crumbling shortbread, and taken his staid
departure, when Jess cleared the tea-things off the table, remarking
simply that it was a mercy we had not got beyond the first cup. We
then retired to dress.

About six o'clock, the time announced for the ceremony, I elbowed my
way through the expectant throng of men, women, and children that
already besieged the smith's door. Shrill demands of "Toss, toss!"
rent the air every time Jess's head showed on the window-blind, and
Andra hoped, as I pushed open the door, "that I hadna forgotten my
bawbees." Weddings were celebrated among the Auld Lichts by showers of
ha'pence, and the guests on their way to the bride's house had to
scatter to the hungry rabble like housewives feeding poultry. Willie
Todd, the best man, who had never come out so strong in his life
before, slipped through the back window, while the crowd, led on by
Kitty McQueen, seethed in front, and making a bolt for it to the
"'Sosh," was back in a moment with a handful of small change. "Dinna
toss ower lavishly at first," the smith whispered me nervously, as we
followed Jess and Willie into the darkening wynd.

The guests were packed hot and solemn in Johnny Allardice's "room:" the
men anxious to surrender their seats to the ladies who happened to be
standing, but too bashful to propose it; the ham and the fish frizzling
noisily side by side but the house, and hissing out every now and then
to let all whom it might concern know that Janet Craik was adding more
water to the gravy. A better woman never lived; but, oh, the hypocrisy
of the face that beamed greeting to the guests as if it had nothing to
do but politely show them in, and gasped next moment with upraised
arms, over what was nearly a fall in crockery. When Janet sped to the
door her "spleet new" merino dress fell, to the pulling of a string,
over her home-made petticoat, like the drop-scene in a theatre, and
rose as promptly when she returned to slice the bacon. The murmur of
admiration that filled the room when she entered with the minister was
an involuntary tribute to the spotlessness of her wrapper and a great
triumph