er bairn, but would not take them for they had
not blue fringes. A bareheaded lassie, hoping to be handsel, threw down
twopence, and asked tape at three yards for a halfpenny. The minister
sent an old black coat beneath his maid's arm, pinned up in a towl, to
get docked in the tails down into a jacket; which I trust I did to his
entire satisfaction, making it fit to a hair. The Duke's butler himself
patronized me, by sending me a coat which was all hair-powder and pomate,
to get a new neck put to it. And James Batter, aye a staunch friend of
the family, dispatched a barefoot cripple lassie down the close to me,
with a brown paper parcel, tied with skinie, and having a memorandum
letter sewed on the top of it, and wafered with a wafer. It ran as
follows; "Maister Batter has sent down, per the bearer, with his
compliments to Mr Wauch, a cuttikin of corduroy, deficient in the instep,
which please let out, as required. Maister Wauch will also please be so
good as observe, that three of the buttons have sprung the thorls, which
he will be obliged to him to replace, at his earliest convenience. Please
send me a message what that may be; and have the account made out,
article for article, and duly discharged, that I may send down the bearer
with the change; and to bring me back the cuttikin and the account, to
save time and trouble. I am, dear sir, your most obedient friend, and
ever most sincerely,

"JAMES BATTER."

No wonder than we attracted customers, for our sign was the prettiest ye
ever saw, though the jacket was not just so neatly painted, as for some
sand-blind creatures not to take it for a goose. I daresay there were
fifty half-naked bairns glowring their eyes out of their heads at it,
from morning till night; and, after they all were gone to their beds,
both Nanse and me found ourselves so proud of our new situation in life,
that we slipped out in the dark by ourselves, and had a prime look at it
with a lantern.

CHAPTER VII.--THE FOREWARNING.

I had a dream which was not all a dream.

BYRON.

Coming events cast their shadows before.

CAMPBELL.

On first commencing business, I have freely confessed, I believe, that I
was unco solicitous of custom, though less from sinful, selfish motives,
than from the, I trust, laudable fear I had about becoming in a jiffy the
father of a small family, every one with a mouth to fill and a back to
cleid--helpless bairns, with nothing to look t