Page:Entertaining history of John Cheap the Chapman (1).pdf/7

7 and off I came to the next house, and told the whole of the story.

After this I travelled up by the water of Clyde, near the foot of Tintock hill, where I met with a swcetsweet [sic] companion, who was an older traveller than I, and he gave me some information how to blow the goodwife, and sleek the goodman; with him I kept company for two months; and as we travelled down Tweed towards the border, we being both hungry, and could get nothing to buy for the belly, we came unto a wife who had been kirning, but she would give us nothing, nor sell so much as one halfpenny worth of her sour milk: Na, na, said she, I’ll neither sell butter, bread nor milk, ’tis a’ little enough to sair my ain family; ye that’s chapman may drink water, ye dinna work sair. Ay, but goodwife, said I, I have been at Temple-bar, where I was sworn ne’er to drink water if I could get better. What do ye say, said she, about Temple-bar! a town just about twa three miles and a bittock frae this; a thief ane was to swear you there, an’ it wasna auld Willy Miller the cobbler the ill thief, a nither minister nor a magistrate ever was in it a’. O but, says the other lad, the Temple-bar he means by is at London. Yea, yea, lad, an’ ye be com’d frae Lunun ye’re little worth. London, said he, is but at home to the placcplace [sic] he comes from. A dear man, quoth she, and where in the warl’ comes