The Life of Mansie Wauch Part 17

The reader will thus perceive that the adventure of the killing-coat, stuck alike in the measurement and in the making by Tammie Bodkin, was destined, in the great current of human events, to form a prominent feature, not only in my own history, but in that of worthy James Batter.

To me it might be considered as a pa.s.sing breeze--having been accustomed to see and suffer a vast deal; but my friend, I fear much, will bear marks of it to his grave. Yet I cannot blame myself with a safe conscience for James having fallen the victim to Cursecowl. I had tried everything to solder up matters which the heart of man could suggest; and knowing that it was a catastrophe which would bring down open war and rebellion throughout the whole parish, my thoughts were all of peace, and how to stave off the eruption of the b.l.o.o.d.y heathen. I had thought over the thing seriously in my bed; and, reckoning plainly that Cursecowl was not one likely soon to hold out a flag of truce, I had come to the determination within myself to sound a parley--and offer either to take back the coat, or refund part of the purchase-money. I may add, that having an unbounded regard for his judgment and descretion, I had, in my own mind, selected James Batter to be sent as the amba.s.sador. The same day, however, brought round the extraordinary purchase of the Willie-goat's head, and gave a new and unexpected turn to the whole business.

Folk, moreover, should never be so over-proud as not to confess when they are in fault; and from what happened, I am free to admit, that James, harmless as a sucking dove, was no match in such a matter for the like of Cursecowl, who was a perfect incarnation, for devilry and cunning, of the old Serpent himself.

My intentions, however, were good, and those of a Christian; for, had Cursecowl accepted the ten s.h.i.+llings by way of blood-money, which it was thus my intention to have offered, this fearful and b.l.o.o.d.y stramash would have been hushed up without the world having become a whit the wiser.

But "there is many a slip," as the proverb says, "between the cup and the lip"; and the best intentions often fall to the ground, like the beggarman between the two stools.

The final conclusion of the whole tradegy was, as it behoves me to mention, that Cursecowl, in consideration of a month's gratis work in the slaughter-house, made a brotherly legacy of the coat to his nephew, young Killim. The laddie was a perfect world's wonder every Sunday, and would have been laughed at out of his seven senses, had he not at last rebelled and fairly thrown it off. I make every allowance for the young man; and am sorry to confess that it was indeed a perfect shame to be seen. At Dalkeith, where one is well known, anything may pa.s.s; but I was always in bodily terror, that, had he gone to Edinburgh, he would have been taken up by the police, on suspicion of being either a Spanish pawtriot or a highway robber.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE--CATCHING A PHILISTINE IN THE COAL-HOLE

Years wore on after the departure and death of poor Mungo Glen, during the which I had a sowd of prentices, good, bad, and indifferent, and who afterwards cut, and are cutting, a variety of figures in the world.

Sometimes I had two or three at a time; for the increase of business that flowed in upon me with a full stream was tremendous, enabling me--who say it that should not say it--to lay by a wheen bawbees for a sore head, or the frailties of old age. Somehow or other, the clothes made on my s...o...b..ard came into great vogue through all Dalkeith, both for neatness of shape and nicety of workmans.h.i.+p; and the young journeymen of other masters did not think themselves perfected, or worthy a decent wage, till they had crooked their houghs for three months in my service. With regard to myself, some of my acquaintances told me, that if I had gone into Edinburgh to push my fortune, I could have cut half the trade out of bread, and maybe risen, in the course of nature, to be Lord Provost himself; but I just heard them speak, and kept my wheisht. I never was overly ambitious; and I remembered how proud Nebuchadnaazer ended with eating gra.s.s on all-fours. Every man has a right to be the best judge of his own private matters; though, to be sure, the advice of a true friend is often more precious than rubies, and sweeter than the Balm of Gilead.

It was about the month of March, in the year of grace _anno Domini_ eighteen hundred, that the whole country trembled, like a giant ill of the ague, under the consternation of Buonaparte, and all the French vagabonds emigrating over, and landing in the Firth. Keep us all! the folk, doit.i.t bodies, put less confidence than became them in what our volunteer regiments were able and willing to do; yet we had a remnant among us of the true blood, that with loud laughter laughed the creatures to scorn; and I, for one, kept up my pluck, like a true Highlander. Does any living soul believe that Scotland--the land of the Tweed, and the Clyde, and the Tay--could be conquered, and the like of us sold, like Egyptian slaves, into captivity? Fie, fie--I despise such haivers. Are we not descended, father and son, from Robert Bruce and Sir William Wallace, having the bright blood of freemen in our veins, and the Pentland Hills, as well as our own dear homes and firesides, to fight for? The rascal that would not give cut-and-thrust for his country as long as he had a breath to draw, or a leg to stand on, should be tied neck and heels, without benefit of clergy, and thrown over Leith pier, to swim for his life like a mangy dog!

Hard doubtless it is--and I freely confess it--to be called by sound of bugle, or tuck of drum, from the counter and the s...o...b..ard--men, that have been born and bred to peaceful callings, to mount the red-jacket, soap the hair, buckle on the buff-belt, load with ball-cartridge, and screw bayonets; but it's no use talking. We were ever the free British; and before we would say to Frenchmen that we were their humble servants, we would either twist the very noses off their faces, or perish in the glorious struggle.

It was aye the opinion of the Political folk, the Whigs, the Black-nebs, the Radicals, the Papists, and the Friends of the People, together with the rest of the clan-jamphrey, that it was a done battle, and that Buonaparte would lick us back and side. All this was in the heart and heat of the great war, when we were struggling, like drowning men, for our very life and existence, and when our colours--the true British flag--were nailed to the mast-head. One would have thought these rips were a set of prophets, they were all so busy prophesying, and never anything good. They kent (believe them) that we were to be smote hip and thigh; and that to oppose the vile Corsican was like men with strait-jackets out of Bedlam. They could see nothing brewing around them but death, and disaster, and desolation, and pillage, and national bankruptcy--our brave Highlanders, with their heads shot off, lying on the b.l.o.o.d.y field of battle, all slaughtered to a man; our sailors, handcuffed and shackled, musing in a French prison on the bypast days of Camperdown, and of Lord Rodney breaking through the line; with all their fleets sunk to the bottom of the salt sea, after being raked fore and aft with chain-shot; and our timber, sugar, tea and treacle merchants, all fleeing for safety and succour down to lodgings in the Abbey Strand, with a yellow stocking on the ae leg and a black one on the other, like a wheen mountebanks. Little could they foresee, with their spentacles of prophecy, that a battle of Waterloo would ever be fought, to make the confounded fugies draw in their horns, and steek up their scraighing gabs for ever. Poor fus.h.i.+onless creatures!

I do not pretend to be a politician,--having been bred to the tailoring line syne ever I was a callant, and not seeing the Advert.e.e.zer Newspapers, or the Edinburgh Evening Courant, save and except at an orra time,--so I shall say no more, nor pretend to be one of the thousand-and-one wise men, able and willing to direct his Majesty's Ministers on all matters of importance regarding Church or State. One thing, however, I trust I ken, and that is, my duty to my King as his loyal subject, to old Scotland as her unworthy son, and to my family as their prop, support, and breadwinner;--so I shall stick to all three (under Heaven) as long as I have a drop of blood in my precious veins.

But the truth is--and I will let it out and shame the de'il--that I could not help making these general observations (as Maister Wiggie calls the spiritualeezing of his discourses), as what I have to relate might well make my principles suspected, were they not known to all the world to be as firm as the foundations of the Ba.s.s Rock. Ye shall nevertheless judge for yourselves.

It was sometime in the blasty month of March, the weather being rawish and rainy, with sharp frosty nights that left all the window-soles whitewashed over with frost rind in the mornings, that as I was going out in the dark, before lying down in my bed, to give a look into the hen-house, and lock the coal-cellar, so that I might hang the bit key on the nail behind our room window-shutter, I happened to give a keek in, and, lo and behold! the awful apparition of a man with a yellow jacket, lying sound asleep on a great lump of parrot-coal in a corner!

In the first hurry of my terror and surprise, at seeing a man with a yellow jacket and a green foraging-cap in such a situation, I was like to drop the good twopenny candle, and faint clean away; but, coming to myself in a jiffie, I determined, in case it might be a highway robber, to thraw about the key, and, running up for the firelock, shoot him through the head instantly, if found necessary. In turning round the key, the lock, being in want of a feather of oil, made a noise, and wakened the poor wretch, who, jumping to the soles of his feet in despair, cried out in a voice that was like to break my heart, though I could not make out one word of his paraphernally. It minded me, by all the world, of a wheen cats fuffing and fighting through ither, and whiles something that sounded like "Sugar, sugar, measure the cord," and "dabble dabble." It was worse than the most outrageous Gaelic ever spoken in the height of pa.s.sion by a Hieland shearer.

"Oho!" thinks I, "friend, ye cannot be a Christian from your lingo, that's one thing poz; and I would wager tippence you're a Frenchy. Who kens, keep us all, but ye may be Buonaparte himself in disguise, come over in a flat-bottomed boat to spy the nakedness of the land. So ye may just rest content, and keep your quarters good till the morn's morning."

It was a wonderful business, and enough to happen to a man in the course of his lifetime, to find Mounseer from Paris in his coal-neuk, and have the enemy of his country snug under lock and key; so, while he kept rampauging, fuffing, stamping, and _diabbling_ away, I went in and brought out Benjie, with a blanket rowed round him, and my journeyman, Tommy Staytape--who, being an orphan, I made a kind of parlour-boarder of, he sleeping on a shake-down beyond the kitchen-fire--to hold a consultation, and be witness of the transaction.

I got my musket, and Tommy Staytape armed himself with the goose--a deadly weapon, whoever may get a clour with it--and Benjie took the poker in one hand, and the tongs in the other; and out we all marched briskly, to make the Frenchman, that was locked up from the light of day in the coal-house, surrender. After hearkening at the door for a while, and finding all quiet, we gave a knock to rouse him up, and see if we could bring any thing out of him by speering cross-questions. Tommy and Benjie trembled from top to toe, like aspen leaves, but fient a word could we make common sense of at all. I wonder who educates these foreign creatures? it was in vain to follow him, for he just gab-gabbled away, like one of the stone masons at the Tower of Babel. At first I was completely bamboozled, and almost dung stupid, though I kent one word of French which I wanted to put to him, so I cried through, "Canna you speak Scotcha, Mounseer?"

He had not the politeness to stop and make answer, but just went on with his string of haivers, without either rhyme or reason, which we could make neither top, tail, nor main of.

It was a sore trial to us all, putting us to our wit's end, and how to come on was past all visible comprehension; when Tommy Staytape, giving his elbow a rub, said, "Od, maister, I wager something that he's broken loose frae Penicuik. We have him like a rotten in a fa'."

On Penicuik being mentioned, we heard the foreign creature in the coal-house groaning out, "och," and "ochone," and "parbleu," and "Mysie Rabble,"--that I fancy was his sweetheart at home, some bit French quean, that wondered he was never like to come from the wars and marry her. I thought on this, for his voice was mournful, though I could not understand the words; and kenning he was a stranger in a far land, my bowels yearned within me with compa.s.sion towards him.

I would have given half-a-crown at that blessed moment to have been able to wash my hands free of him; but I swithered, and was like the cuddie between the two bundles of hay. At long and last a thought struck me, which was to give the deluded simple creature a chance of escape; reckoning that, if he found his way home, he would see the shame and folly of fighting against us any more; and, marrying Mysie Rabble, live a contented and peaceful life, under his own fig and bay tree. So wis.h.i.+ng him a sound sleep, I cried through the door, "Mounseer, gooda nighta"; decoying away Benjie and Tommy Staytape into the house. Bidding them depart to their beds, I said to them after shutting the door, "Now, callants, we have the precious life of a fellow-creature in our hand, and to account for. Though he has a yellow jacket on, and speaks nonsense, yet, nevertheless, he is of the same flesh and blood as ourselves. Maybe we may be all obliged to wear green foraging-caps before we die yet!

Mention what we have seen or heard to no living soul; for maybe, if he were to escape, we would be all taken up on suspicion of being spies, and hanged on a gallows as high as Haman."--After giving them this wholesome advice, I dispatched them to their beds like lamplighters, binding them to never fash their thumbs, but sleep like tops, as I would keep a sharp look-out till morning.

As soon, howsoever, as I heard them sleeping, and playing on the pipes through their noses, I cried first "Tommy," and syne "Benjie," to be sure; and, glad to receive no answer from either, I went to the aumrie and took out a mutton-bone, gey sair pyked, but fleshy enough at the mouse end; and, putting a penny row beside it, c.r.a.p out to the coal-house on my tiptaes. All was quiet as p.u.s.s.ie,--so I shot them through the hole at the corner made for letting the gaislings in by; and giving a tirl, cried softly through, "Halloa, Mounseer, there's your suppera fora youa; for I dara saya you are yauppa."

The poor chiel commenced again to grunt and grane, and groan and yelp, and cry ochone;--and make such woful lamentations, that heart of man could not stand it; and I found the warm tears prap-prapping to my een.

Before being put to this trial of my strength, I thought that, if ever it was my fortune to foregather with a Frenchman, either him or me should do or die; but, i'fegs, one should not crack so crouse before they are put to the test; and, though I had taken a prisoner without fighting at all--though he had come into the coal-hole of the Philistines of his own accord as it were, and was as safe as the spy in the house of Rahab at Jericho--and though we had him like a mouse beneath a firlet, snug under custody of lock and key, yet I considered within myself, with a pitiful consideration, that, although he could not speak well, he might yet feel deeply; that he might have a father and mother, and sisters and brothers, in his ain country, weeping and wearying for his return; and that his true love Mysie Rabble might pine away like a snapped flower, and die of a broken heart.

Being a volunteer, and so one of his Majesty's confidential servants, I swithered tremendously between my duty as a man and a soldier; but, do what you like, nature will aye be uppermost. The scale weighed down to the side of pity. I hearkened to the scripture that promises a blessing to the merciful in heart; and determined, come of it what would, to let the Frenchy take his chance of falling into other hands.

Having given him a due allowance by looking at my watch, and thinking he would have had enough of time to have taken his will of the mutton-bone in the way of pyking, I went to the press and brought out a bottle of swipes, which I also shoved through the hole; although, for lack of a tanker, there being none at hand, he would be obliged to lift it to his head, and do his best. To show the creature did not want sense, he shoved, when he was done, the empty plate and the toom bottle through beneath the door, mumbling some trash or other which no living creature could comprehend, but which I dare say, from the way it was said, was the telling me how much he was obliged for his supper and poor lodging. From my kindness towards him, he grew more composed; but as he went back to the corner to lie down, I heard him give two-three heavy sighs.--I could not thole't, mortal foe though the man was of mine; so I gave the key a canny thraw round in the lock, as it were by chance; and, wis.h.i.+ng him a good-night, went to my bed beside Nanse.

At the dawn of day, by c.o.c.k-craw, Benjie and Tommy Staytape, keen of the ploy, were up and astir, as anxious as if their life depended on it, to see that all was safe and snug, and that the prisoner had not shot the lock. They agreed to march sentry over him half an hour the piece, time about, the one stretching himself out on a stool beside the kitchen fire, by way of a bench in the guard-house, while the other went to and fro like the ticker of a clock. I dare say they saw themselves marching him after breakfast time, with his yellow jacket, through a mob of weans with glowering een and gaping mouths, up to the Tolbooth.

The back window being up a jink, I heard the two confabbing. "We'll draw cuts," said Benjie, "which is to walk sentry first; see, here's two straws, the longest gets the choice."--"I've won," cried Tommy; "so gang you in a while, and if I need ye, or grow frightened, I'll beat leather-ty-patch wi' my buckles on the back-door. But we had better see first what he is about, for he may be howking a hole through aneath the foundations; thae fiefs can work like moudiwarts."--"I'll slip forret,"

said Benjie, "and gie a peep."--"Keep to a side," cried Tommy Staytape, "for, dog on it, Moosey'll maybe hae a pistol; and, if his birse be up, he would think nae mair o' shooting ye as dead as a red herring, than I would do of taking my breakfast."

"I'll rin past, and gie a knock at the door wi' the poker to rouse him up?" asked Benjie.

"Come away then," answered Tommy, "and ye'll hear him gie a yowl, and commence gabbling like a goose."

As all this was going on, I rose and took a vizzy between the c.h.i.n.ks of the window-shutters; so, just as I got my neb to the hole, I saw Benjie, as he flew past, give the door a drive. His consternation, on finding it flee half open, may be easier imagined than described; especially, as on the door dunting to again, it being soople in the hinges, they both plainly heard a fistling within. Neither of them ever got such a fleg since they were born; for expecting the Frenchman to bounce out like a roaring lion, they hurried like mad into the house, couping the creels over one another, Tommy spraining his thumb against the back-door, and Benjie's foot going into Tommy's coat-pocket, which it carried away with it, like a cloth-sandal.

At the noise of this stramash, I took opportunity to come fleeing down the stair, with the gun in my hand; in the first place, to show them I was not frightened to handle fire-arms; and, in the second, making pretence that I thought it was Mounseer with his green foraging-cap making an attempt at housebreaking. Benjie was in a terrible pickle; and, though his nose was blooding with the drive he had come against Tommy's teeth, he took hold of my arm like grim death, crying, "Take tent, faither, take tent; the door is open, and the Penicuiker hiding himself behind it. He'll brain some of us with a lump of coal--and will he!"

I jealoused at once that this was nonsense; judging that, by all means of rationality, the creature would be off and away like lightning to the sea-sh.o.r.e, and over to France in some honest man's fis.h.i.+ng boat, down by at Fisherrow; but, to throw stoure in the een of the two callants, I loaded with a wheen draps in their presence; and, warily priming the pan, went forward with the piece at full-c.o.c.k.

Tommy and Benjie came behind me, while, pus.h.i.+ng the door wide open with the muzzle, as I held my finger at the tricker, I cried, "Stand or be shot"; when young Cursecowl's big ugly mastiff-dog, with the bare mutton bone in its teeth, bolted through between my legs like a fury, and with such a force as to heel me over on the braid of my back, while I went a dunt on the causey that made the gun go off, and riddled Nanse's best was.h.i.+ng-tub, in a manner that laid it on the superannuated list as to the matter of holding in water. The goose that was sitting on her eggs, among clean straw, in the inside of it, was also rendered a lameter for life.

What became of the French vagrant was never seen or heard tell of, from that day to this. Maybe he was catched, and, tied neck and heels, hurried back to Penicuik as fast as he left it; or maybe--as one of the Fisherrow oyster-boats was amissing next morning--he succeeded in giving our brave fleets the slip, and rowing night and day against wind and tide, got home in a safe skin: but this is all matter of surmise--n.o.body kens.

On making search in the coal-house at our leisure afterwards, we found a boxful of things with black dots on them, some with one, some with two, and four, and six, and so on, for playing at an outlandish game they call the dominoes. It was the handiwork of the poor French creature, that had no other Christian employment but making these and suchlike, out of sheep-shanks and marrow bones. I never liked gambling all my life, it being contrary to the Ten Commandments; and mind of putting on the back of the fire the old pack of cards, with the Jack of Trumps among them, that the deboshed journeymen tailors, in the shop with me in the Gra.s.smarket, used to play birkie with when the maister's back was turned.

This is the first time I have acknowledged the transaction to a living soul; had they found me out at the time, my life would not have been worth a pinch of snuff. But as to the dominoes, considering that the Frenchy must have left them as a token of grat.i.tude, and as the only payment in his power for a bit comfortable supper, it behoved me--for so I thought--not to turn the wrong side of my face altogether on his present, as that would be unmannerly towards a poor stranger.

Nevertheless, and notwithstanding all these reasons, the dominoes, after everything that can be said of good anent them, were a black sight, and for months and months produced a scene of riot and idleness after working hours, that went far to render our housie that was before a picture of decorum and decency a tabernacle of confusion and a h.e.l.l upon earth.

Whenever time for stopping work came about, down we regularly all sat, night after night, the wife, Benjie, and Tommy Staytape, and myself, playing for a ha'penny the game, and growing as anxious, fierce, and keen about it, as if we had been earning the bread of life. After two or three months' trial, I saw that it would never do, for all subordination was fast coming to an end in our bit house, and, for lack of looking after, a great number of small accounts for clouting elbows, piecing waistcoats, and mending leggins, remained unpaid; a great number of wauf customers crowding about us, by way of giving us their change, but with no intention of ever paying a single fraction. The wife, that used to keep everything bein and snug, behaving herself like the sober mother of a family, began to funk on being taken through hands, and grew obstrapulous with her tongue. Instead of following my directions--who was his born maister in the cutting and shaping line--Tommy Staytape pretended to set up a judgment of his own, and disfigured some ploughmen's jackets in a manner most hideous to behold; while, to crown all, even Absalom, the very callant Benjie, my only bairn, had the impudence to contradict me more than once, and began to think himself as clever as his father. Save us all! it was a terrible business, but I determined, come what would, to give it the finis.h.i.+ng st.i.tch.

Every night being worse than another, I did not wait long for an opportunity of letting the whole of them ken my mind, and that, whenever I chose, I could make them wheel to the right about. So it chanced, as we were playing, that I was in prime luck, first rooking the one and syne the other, and I saw them twisting and s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g their mouths about as if they were chewing bitter aloes. Finding that they were on the point of being beaten roop and stoop, they all three rose up from the chairs, crying with one voice, that I was a cheat.--An elder of Maister Wiggie's kirk to be called a cheat! Most awful!!! Flesh and blood could not stand it, more especially when I thought on who had dared to presume to call me such; so, in a whirlwind of fury, I swept up two nievefuls of dominoes off the table, and made them flee into the bleezing fire; where, after fizzing and cracking like a wheen squeebs, the whole tot, except about half-a-dozen which fell into the porritch-pot, which was on boiling at the time, were reduced to a heap of grey aizles. I soon showed them who was the top of the tree, and what they were likely to make of undutiful rebellion.

So much for a Mounseer's legacy; being in a kind of doubt whether, according to the Riot Act and the Articles of War, I had a clear conscience in letting him away, I could not expect that any favour granted at his hands was likely to prosper. In fighting, it is well kent to themselves and all the world, that they have no earthly chance with us; so they are reduced to the necessity of doing what they can, by coming to our firesides in sheep's clothing, and throwing ram-pus.h.i.+on among the family broth. They had better take care that they do not get their fingers scadded.

Having given the dominoes their due, and washed my hands free of gambling I trust for evermore, I turned myself to a better business, which was the going, leaf by leaf, back through our bit day-book, where I found a tremendous sowd of wee outstanding debts. I daresay, not to tell a lee, there were fifty of them, from a s.h.i.+lling to eighteenpence, and so on; but small and small, reckoned up by simple addition, amount to a round sum; while, to add to the misery of the matter, I found we were entangling ourselves to work to a wheen ugly customers, skemps that had not wherewithal to pay lawful debts, and downright rascal-raggam.u.f.fins, and ne'er-do-weels. According to the articles of indenture drawn up between me and Tommy Staytape, by Rory Sneckdrawer the penny-writer, when he was bound a prentice to me for seven years, I had engaged myself to bring him up to be a man of business. Though now a journeyman, I reckoned the obligation still binding; so, tying up two dockets of accounts with a piece of twine, I gave one parcel to Tommy, and the other to Benjie, telling them by way of encouragement, that I would give them a penny the pound for what silver they could bring me in by hook or crook.

[Picture: An old Dalkeith body]

After three days' toil and trouble, wherein they mostly wore their shoon off their feet, going first up one close and syne down another, up trap-stairs to garrets and ben long trances that led into dirty holes--what think ye did they collect? Not one bodle--not one coin of copper! This one was out of work;--and that one had his house-rent to pay;--and a third one had an income in his nose;--and a fourth was bedridden with rheumatics;--and a fifth one's mother's auntie's cousin was dead;--and a sixth one's good-brother's nevoy was going to be married come Martymas;--and a seventh one was away to the back of beyond to see his granny in the Hielands;--and so on. It was a terrible business, but what wool can ye get by clipping swine?

The only rational answers I got were two; one of them, Geggie Trotter, a natural simpleton, told Tommy Staytape, "that, for part-payment, he would give me a prime leg of mutton, as he had killed his sow last week."--And what, said I to Benjie, did Jacob Truff the gravedigger tell ye by way of news? "He just bad me tell ye, faither, that hoo could ye expect he cou'd gie ye onything till the times grew better; as he hadna buried a living soul in the kirkyard for mair nor a fortnight."

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX--ANENT BENJIE IN HIS THIRTEENTH YEAR

It is a most wonderful thing to the eye of a philosopher, to make observation how youth gets up, notwithstanding all the dunts and tumbles of infancy--to say nothing of the spaining-brash and the teeth-cutting; and to behold the visible changes that the course of a few years produces. Keep us all! it seemed but yesterday to me, when Benjie, a wee bit smout of a wean, with long linty locks and docked petticoats, toddled but and ben, with a coral gumstick tied round his waist with a bit knitten; and now, after he had been at Dominie Threshem's for four years, he had learned to read Barrie's Collection almost as well as the master could do for his lugs; and was up to all manner of accounts, from simple addition and the multiplication-table, even to vulgar fractions, and all the lave of them.