can be.

Mrs. M'Collop herself is neat, thrifty, precise, tolerably genial,
and `verra releegious.'

Her partner, who is also the cook, is a person introduced to us as
Miss Diggity. We afterwards learned that this is spelled Dalgety,
but it is not considered good form, in Scotland, to pronounce the
names of persons and places as they are written. When, therefore, I
allude to the cook, which will be as seldom as possible, I shall
speak of her as Miss Diggity-Dalgety, so that I shall be presenting
her correctly both to the eye and to the ear, and giving her at the
same time a hyphenated name, a thing which is a secret object of
aspiration in Great Britain.

In selecting our own letters and parcels from the common stock on
the hall table, I perceive that most of our fellow-lodgers are
hyphenated ladies, whose visiting-cards diffuse the intelligence
that in their single persons two ancient families and fortunes are
united. On the ground floor are the Misses Hepburn-Sciennes
(pronounced Hebburn-Sheens); on the floor above us are Miss
Colquhoun (Cohoon) and her cousin Miss Cockburn-Sinclair (Coburn-
Sinkler). As soon as the Hepburn-Sciennes depart, Mrs. M'Collop
expects Mrs. Menzies of Kilconquhar, of whom we shall speak as Mrs.
Mingess of Kinyuchar. There is not a man in the house; even the
Boots is a girl, so that 22 Breadalbane Terrace is as truly a castra
puellarum as was ever the Castle of Edinburgh with its maiden
princesses in the olden time.

We talked with Miss Diggity-Dalgety on the evening of our first day