use would one glove be to me? I tell you, if a woman had the impidence
to gie me one glove, I would fling it in her face."

Nothing could have been clearer, and he had put it thus considerately
because when a woman, even the shrewdest of them, is excited (any man
knows this), one has to explain matters to her as simply and patiently
as if she were a four-year-old; yet Gavinia affected to be
unconvinced, and for several days she led Corp the life of a lodger in
his own house.

"Hands off that poor innocent," she said when he approached the baby.

If he reproved her, she replied meekly, "What can you expect frae a
woman that doesna wear gloves?"

To the baby she said: "He despises you, my bonny, because you hae no
gloves. Ay, that's what maks him turn up his nose at you. But your
mother is fond o' you, gloves or no gloves."

She told the baby the story of the glove daily, with many monstrous
additions.

When Corp came home from his work, she said that a poor, love-lorn
female had called with a boot for him, and a request that he should
carry it in the pocket of his Sabbath breeks.

Worst of all, she listened to what he said in the night. Corp had a
habit of talking in his sleep. He was usually taking tickets at such
times, and it had been her custom to stop him violently; but now she
changed her tactics: she encouraged him. "I would be lying in my bed,"