Page:Merry tricks of Leper the taylor.pdf/17

(17) 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 snevled through her nose greatly when she spoke.--In the morning when she went to make their pottage, she made a fashion of washing the pot, which to appearance seemed to him to have been amongst the first that had been made; then she set it before the fire till she went to the well, in which time Leper looking into it, sees two great holes stapped with clouts, 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 out of it; presently in comes the wife with the water, and pours it into the pot which st the fire-side all in a dam, for still as she poured in, it ran out, the wife being shortsighted, 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