from; but as I was seeing them served myself at our door, I spoke to
them, and they told me that their mother was lying sick and ill at
home. They were the orphans of a broken merchant from Glasgow, and,
with their mother, had come out to our town the week before, without
knowing where else to seek their meat.

Mrs Pawkie, who was a tender-hearted mother herself, took in the
bairns on hearing this, and we made of them, and the same night,
among our acquaintance, we got a small sum raised to assist their
mother, who proved a very well-bred and respectable lady-like
creature. When she got better, she was persuaded to take up a
school, which she kept for some years, with credit to herself and
benefit to the community, till she got a legacy left her by a
brother that died in India, the which, being some thousands, caused
her to remove into Edinburgh, for the better education of her own
children; and its seldom that legacies are so well bestowed, for she
never forgot Mrs Pawkie's kindness, and out of the fore-end of her
wealth she sent her a very handsome present. Divers matters of
elegance have come to us from her, year by year, since syne, and
regularly on the anniversary day of that sore Saturday, as the
Saturday following the meal mob was ever after called.



CHAPTER XIV--THE SECOND PROVOSTRY



I have had occasion to observe in the course of my experience, that
there is not a greater mollifier of the temper and nature of man