CHAPTER III.

MISTRESS CROALE.

The house at which they met had yet not a little character
remaining. Mistress Croale had come in for a derived worthiness, in
the memory, yet lingering about the place, of a worthy aunt
deceased, and always encouraged in herself a vague idea of
obligation to live up to it. Hence she had made it a rule to supply
drink only so long as her customers kept decent -- that is, so long as
they did not quarrel aloud, and put her in danger of a visit from
the police; tell such tales as offended her modesty; utter oaths of
any peculiarly atrocious quality; or defame the Sabbath Day, the
Kirk, or the Bible. On these terms, and so long as they paid for
what they had, they might get as drunk as they pleased, without the
smallest offence to Mistress Croale. But if the least
unquestionable infringement of her rules occurred, she would pounce
upon the shameless one with sudden and sharp reproof. I doubt not
that, so doing, she cherished a hope of recommending herself above,
and making deposits in view of a coming balance-sheet. The result
for this life so far was, that, by these claims to respectability,
she had gathered a clientŠle of douce, well-disposed drunkards, who
rarely gave her any trouble so long as they were in the house though
sometimes she had reason to be anxious about the fate of individuals
of them after they left it.