fifteen years the domestic _lares_ had sat quietly surveying the economy
of poverty. She rose composedly from the chair into which the effect of
Henney's exclamation had thrown her, went to the blue chest which
contained her holiday suit, took out, one after another, the chintz
gown, the mankie petticoat, the curch, the red plaid; and, after washing
from her face the perspiration drops, she began to put on her humble
finery--all the operation having been gone through with that quiet
action which belongs to strong minds where resolution has settled the
quivering chords of doubt.

Following the dressed dame up the High Street, we next find her in the
writing-booth of Mr. James Dallas, writer to his Majesty's Signet. The
gentleman was, after the manner of his tribe, minutely scanning some
papers--that is, he was looking into them so sharply that you would have
inferred that he was engaged in hunting for "flaws;" a species of game
that is both a prey and a reward--_et praeda et premium_, as an old
proverb says. Nor shall we say he was altogether pleased when he found
his inquiry, whatever it might be, interrupted by the entrance of Mrs.
Margaret Hislop of Toddrick's Wynd; notwithstanding that to this
personage he and Mrs. Dallas, and all the Dallases, were indebted for
the whiteness of their linen. No doubt she would be wanting payment of
her account; yet why apply to him, and not to Mrs. Dallas? And, besides,
it needed only one glance of the writer's eye to show that his visitor
had something more of the look of a client than a cleaner of linen; a
conclusion which was destined to be confirmed, when the woman, taking up
one of the high-backed chairs in the room, placed it right opposite to
the man of law, and, hitching her round body into something like stiff
dignity, seated herself. Nor was this change from her usual deportment
the only one she underwent; for, as soon appeared, her style of speech
was to pass from broad Scotch, not altogether into the "Inglis" of the