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laughed till his sides were like to burst, and gave Leper half-a-crown to drink.

Leper was not long done with his apprenticeship till he set up for himself, and got a journeyman and an apprentice, was coming into very good business, and had he restrained his roguish tricks, he might have done very well. He and his lads being employed to work in a farmer's house, where the housewife was a great miser, and not very cleanly in making meat, and snivelled through her nose greatly when she spoke. In the morning, when she went to make the potage, she made a fashion of washing the pot, which to appearance seemed to him to have been among the first that had been made; then sets it before the fire till she went to the well, in which time Leper looking into it, sees two great holes stapped with clonts, he takes up his goose, and holds it as high as his head, then lets it drop into the pot, which knocked out the bottom of it. Presently in comes the wife with the water, and pours it into the pot, which set the fireside all in a dam, for still as she poured in; it ran out: the wife being short-sighted, or what they call sand blind, looks into the pot, holds up both her hands and cries, 'Losh, preserve me, sirs, for the grip atween the twa holes is broken.' Says Leper, 'the pot was old enough; but do you