saxpence, ye'll be
noo' makin' game o' me ony mair, I'm thinkin'. Betty, ye maun jist step
ow'r the curb-stane to the broker's, an' bring hame the table."

Away sped the nimble-footed Betty, and we soon heard the clattering of
the table, as the leaves flapped to and fro as she lugged it up the
public stairs.

"Now for the great bargain!" exclaimed the saucy Jim; "I think, Mrs.
Waddel, I'll buy it of you, as my venture to Canada."

"Did ye ever!" exclaimed the old lady, her eyes brightening as Betty
dragged in the last bargain, and placed it triumphantly before her
mistress. Like the Marquis of Anglesea, it had been in the wars, and
with a terrible clatter, the incomparable table fell prostrate to the
floor. Betty opened her great black eyes with a glance of blank
astonishment, and raising her hands with a tragic air which was
perfectly irresistible, exclaimed, "Mercy me, but it wants a fut!"

"A what?" screamed Jim, as he sank beside the fallen table and rolled
upon the ground in a fit of irrepressible merriment; "Do, for Heaven's
sake, tell me the English for a fut. Oh dear, I shall die! Why do you
make such funny purchases, Mrs. Waddel, and suffer Betty to show them
off in such a funny way? You will be the death of me, indeed you will;
and then, what will my Mammy say?"

To add to this ridiculous scene, Mrs. Waddel's grey parrot, who was not
the least important personage in her establishment, having been
presented to her by her sailor son, fraternised with the prostrate lad,
and echoed his laughter in the most outrageous manner.

"Whist, Poll! Hould yer clatter. It's no laughing matter to lose three
an' saxpence in buying the like o' that."

Mrs. Waddel did not attend another auction during the month the Lyndsays
occupied her lodgings. With regard to Betty Fraser, Jim picked up a page
out of her history, which greatly amused Flora Lyndsay, who delighted in
the study of human character. We will give it here.

Betty Fraser's first mistress was a Highland lady, who had married and
settled in Edinburgh. On her first confinement, she could fancy no one
but a Highland girl to take care of the babe, when the regular nurse was
employed about her own person. She therefore wrote to her mother to send
her by the first vessel which sailed for Edinburgh, a good,
simple-hearted girl, whom she could occasionally trust with the baby.
Betty, who was a tenant's daughter, and a humble scion of the great
family tree, duly arrive