I had said that the row of stockings were hung on a string by the fire, which was a recollection of my own, but she could tell me whether they were hung upside down.

She became quite skilful at sending or giving me (for now I could be with her half the year) the right details, but still she smiled at the editor, and in her gay moods she would say, 'I was fifteen when I got my first pair of elastic-sided boots.

Tell him my charge for this important news is two pounds ten.' 'Ay, but though we're doing well, it's no' the same as if they were a book with your name on it.' So the ambitious woman would say with a sigh, and I did my best to turn the Auld Licht sketches into a book with my name on it.

Then perhaps we understood most fully how good a friend our editor had been, for just as I had been able to find no well-known magazine--and I think I tried all--which would print any article or story about the poor of my native land, so now the publishers, Scotch and English, refused to accept the book as a gift.

I was willing to present it to them, but they would have it in no guise; there seemed to be a blight on everything that was Scotch.