rpolated Francesca impertinently.

"It is true," continued Miss Dalziel, "you will often sit beside a
minister or a minister's wife, who will make you scorn the sordid
appetites of flesh, but if you do not, then eat as little as may be,
and flee up the Mound to whichever Assembly is the Mecca of your
soul!"

"My niece's tongue is an unruly member," said the ex-Moderator, who
was present at this diatribe, "and the principal mistake she makes in
her judgment of these clerical feasts is that she criticises them as
conventional repasts, whereas they are intended to be informal
meetings together of people who wish to be better acquainted."

"Hot bacon and eggs would be no bar to friendship," answered Miss
Dalziel, with an affectionate _moue_.

"Cold bacon and eggs is better than cold piety," said the
ex-Moderator, "and it may be a good discipline for fastidious young
ladies who have been spoiled by Parisian breakfasts."

It is to Mrs. M'Collop that we owe our chief insight into technical
church matters, although we seldom agree with her "opeenions" after we
gain our own experience. She never misses hearing one sermon on a
Sabbath, and oftener she listens to two or three. Neither does she
confine herself to the ministrations of a single preacher, but roves
from one sanctuary to another, seeking the bread of life, often,
however, according to her own account, getting a particularly
indigestible "stane."

She is thus a complete guide to the Edinburgh pulpit, and when she is
making a bed in the morning she dispenses criticism in so large and
impartial a manner that it would make the flesh of the "meenistry"
creep were it overheard. I used to think Ian Maclaren's sermon-taster
a possible exaggeration of an existent type, but I now see that she is
truth itself.

"Ye'll be tryin' anither kirk the morn?" suggests Mrs. M'Collop,
spreading the clean Sunday sheet over the mattress. "Wha did ye hear
the Sawbath that's bye? Dr. A? Ay, I ken him ower weel; he's been
there for fifteen years an' mair. Ay, he's a gifted mon--_off an'
on_!" with an emphasis showing clearly that, in her estimation, the
times when he is "off" outnumber those when he is "on."... "Ye have na
heard auld Dr. B yet?" (Here she tucks in the upper sheet tidily at
the foot.) "He's a graund strachtforrit mon, is Dr. B, forbye he's
growin' maist awfu' dreich in his sermons, though when he's that
wearisome a body canna heed him wi' oot takin' peppermints to the