ad it," he argued with her, "ye would juist hae to lock it
awa in the drawers. Ye would never even be seein' 't."

"Ay, would I," said Jess. "I would often tak it oot an' look at it.
Ay, an' I would aye ken it was there."

"But naebody would ken ye had it but yersel," said Hendry, who had a
vague notion that this was a telling objection.

"Would they no?" answered Jess. "It would be a' through the toon afore
nicht."

"Weel, all I can say," said Hendry, "is 'at ye're terrible foolish to
tak the want o' sic a useless thing to heart."

"Am no takkin' 't to heart," retorted Jess, as usual.

Jess needed many things in her days that poverty kept from her to the
end, and the cloak was merely a luxury. She would soon have let it
slip by as something unattainable had not Hendry encouraged it to
rankle in her mind. I cannot say when he first determined that Jess
should have a cloak, come the money as it liked, for he was too ashamed
of his weakness to admit his project to me. I remember, however, his
saying to Jess one day:

"I'll warrant you could mak a cloak yersel the marrows o' thae eleven
and a bits, at half the price?"

"It would cost," said Jess, "sax an' saxpence, exactly. The cloth
would be five shillins, an' the beads a shillin'. I have some braid
'at would do fine for the front, but the buttons would be sax-pence."

"Ye're sure o' that?"

"I ken fine, for I got Leeby to price the things in the shop."

"Ay, but it maun be ill to shape the cloaks richt. There was a queer
cut aboot that ane Peter Dickie's new wife had on."

"Queer cut or no queer cut," said Jess, "I took the shape o' My
Hobart's ane the day she was here at her tea, an' I could mak the
identical o't for sax and sax."

"I dinna believe't," said Hendry, but when he and I were alone he told
me, "There's no a doubt she could mak it. Ye heard her say she had
ta'en the shape? Ay, that shows she's rale set on a cloak."

Had Jess known that Hendry had been saving up for months to buy her
material for a cloak, she would not have let him do it. She could not
know, however, for all the time he was scraping together his pence, he
kept up a ring-ding-dang about her folly. Hendry gave Jess all the
wages he weaved, except threepence weekly, most of which went in
tobacco and snuff. The dulseman had perhaps a halfpenny from him in
the fortnight. I noticed that for a long time Hendry neither smoked
nor snuffed, and I knew that for years he ha