Page:Life of Mansie Wauch tailor in Dalkeith (1).pdf/12

12 and my shop door opened to the public with a wheen ready-made waistcoats, gallowses, leathercaps, and Kilmarnock cowls, hung up at the window, than business flowed in upon us in a perfect torrent. First one came in for his measure, and then another; a wife came in for a pair of red worsted boots for her bairn, but would not take them for they had not blue fringes. A bareheaded lassie, hoping to be hansel, threw down twopence, and asked tape at three yards a halfpenny. The minister sent an old black coat beneath his maid’s arm, prinned up in a towel, to get docked in the tails down into a jacket: which I trust I did to his entire satisfaction, making it fit to a hair. The Duke’s butler himself patronised me, by sending me a coat which was all hair powder and pomate, to get a new neck put to it.

No wonder than we attracted customers, for our sign was the prettiest ye ever saw, though the jacket was not just so neatly painted, as for some sand-blind creatures not to take it for a goose. I daresay there were fifty half-naked bairns glowring their een out of their heads at it, from morning till night: and, after they all were gone to their beds, both Nanse and me found ourselves so proud of our new situation in life, that we sliped out in the dark by ourselves, and had a prime look at it with a lantern.

Mony a time and often had I heard of play-acting,