Page:The Cottagers of Glenburnie - Hamilton (1808).djvu/276

 this dislike; and on all their visits of condolence, expressed, in feeling terms, their sense of the sad change that had taken place in the appearance of the house, which they said was "now sae unco, they wad scarcely ken it for the same place."

"Aye!" exclaimed the wife of auld John Smith, who happened to visit the widow the first evening she was able to sit up to tea, "aye, alake! it's weel seen, that whar there's new lairds there's new laws. But how can your woman and your bairns put up wi' a' this fashery?"

"I kenna, truly," replied the widow; "but Mrs Mason has just sic a way wi' them, she gars them do ony thing she likes. Ye may think it is an eery thing to me, to see my poor bairns submitting that way to pleasure a strainger in a' her nonsense."

"An eery thing, indeed!" said Mrs Smith; "gif ye had but seen how she gard your dochter Meg clean out the kirn! eutside and inside! ye wad hae been wae