Page:Important passages in the life of Mansie Wauch, tailor in Dalkeith.pdf/7

7 of other years too visibly effected to show. The long yellow hair hung down, like o flax wig, the length of my lantern jaws, which looked, notwithstanding my yapness and stiff appetite, as if eating and they had broken up acquaintanceship. My blue jacket seemed in the sleeves to have picked a quarrel with the wrists, and had retreated to a tait below the elbows. The hannah-buttons, on the contrary appeared to have taken a strong liking to the shoulders, a little below which the showed their tarnished brightness. At the middle of the back the tails terminated leaving the well-worn rear of my corduroys, like a full moon seen through a dark haze. Oh! but I must have been a bonny lad.

My first flame was the minister's lassie, Jess, a buxom and forward queen, two or three years older than myself. I used to sit looking at her in the kirk, and felt a droll confusion when our met. It di'led through my heart like a dart, and I looked down at my psalm-book sheepish and blushing. Fain would I have spoken to her, but it would not do; my courage aye failed me at the pinch though she whiles gave me a smile when she passed me. She used to go to the well every night, with her twa stoups, to draw water after the manner of the Israelites at gloaming: so I thought of watching to give her the two apples which I had carried in my pouch for more than a week for that purpose. How she laughed when I stappit them into her hand, and brushed by without speaking? I stood at the bottom of the close listening, and heard her laughing till she was like to split. My heart flap flappit in my breast like a pair of fauners. It was a moment of heavenly hope; but, I saw Jamie Coom, the black-smith, who I aye jealoused was my rival, coming down to the well. I saw her give him one of the apples; and hearing him say with a loud guffaw, "Where is the tailor?" I took to my heels, and never stopped till