There being a vacancy for a schoolmistress, it was proposed to Mrs
Malcolm, that, under her superintendence, her daughter Kate, that
had been learning great artifices in needle-work so long with Lady
Macadam, should take up the school, and the session undertook to
make good to Kate the sum of five pounds sterling per annum, over
and above what the scholars were to pay. But Mrs Malcolm said she
had not strength herself to warsle with so many unruly brats, and
that Kate, though a fine lassie, was a tempestuous spirit, and might
lame some of the bairns in her passion; and that selfsame night,
Lady Macadam wrote me a very complaining letter, for trying to wile
away her companion; but her ladyship was a canary-headed woman, and
given to flights and tantrums, having in her youth been a great
toast among the quality. It would, however, have saved her from a
sore heart, had she never thought of keeping Kate Malcolm. For this
year her only son, who was learning the art of war at an academy in
France, came to pay her, his lady mother, a visit. He was a brisk
and light-hearted stripling, and Kate Malcolm was budding into a
very rose of beauty; so between them a hankering began, which, for a
season, was productive of great heaviness of heart to the poor old
cripple lady; indeed, she assured me herself, that all her
rheumatics were nothing to the heart-ache which she suffered in the
progress of this business. But that will be more treated of
hereafter; suffice it to say for the present, that we have thus
recorded how the plan for making Kate Malcolm our schoolmistress
came to nought. It pleased, however, Him, from whom cometh every
good and perfect gift, to send at this time among us a Miss Sabrina
Hooky, the daughter of old Mr Hooky, who had been schoolmaster in a
neighbouring parish. She had gone, after his death, to live with an
auntie in Glasgow, that kept a shop in the Gallowgate. It was