Our new quarters were a great success; a ground-floor flat with a fine
front door; a large well-furnished sitting room with two windows looking
out on to the street, and an equally large double-bedded room at the back
of the sitting room. Our landlady, a kind, motherly, canny Scotchwoman,
looked after us well and favoured us with many a bit of good advice: "You
must be guid laddies, and tak care o' the bawbees; you maun na eat
butchers' meat twice the week; tak plenty o' parritch and dinna be
extravagant." Economy with the good old soul was a cardinal virtue,
waste a deadly sin. I fear she was often shocked at our easy Saxon ways,
though Tom and I thought ourselves models of thrift.

Once, it was on a Sunday, Tom and I, with a party of friends, had had a
very long walk, a regular pedestrian excursion, thirty miles, there or
thereabouts, to use a Scotticism, and poor Tom was quite knocked up and
confined to bed for several days. Our good old landlady was greatly
shocked; a strict Sabbatarian, she knew it was a punishment for "breakin'
the Sabbath; why had na ye gane to the kirk like guid laddies?" We
modestly reminded her that we always did go, excepting of course on this
particular Sunday. "Then whit business had ye to stay awa on ony
Sabbath?" We had nothing to say in answer to this. The dear old
creature was really shocked at our backsliding; but she nursed Tom very
tenderly all the same.

When the sultry heat of summer came we found Glasgow very trying, and
though sorry to leave our good landlady, moved into the country, to
Cambuslang, a village some four miles from the city, which was then
becoming a favourite residential resort.

At Cambuslang I made the acquaintance and became the friend of _Cynicus_,