in Glasgow. Though he had never before set eyes on him, Archie had no
difficulty in identifying him, and no hesitation in pronouncing him
vulgar, the worst of the family. Clem was leaning lazily forward when
Archie first saw him. Presently he leaned nonchalantly back; and that
deadly instrument, the maiden, was suddenly unmasked in profile. Though
not quite in the front of the fashion (had anybody cared!), certain
artful Glasgow mantua-makers, and her own inherent taste, had arrayed
her to great advantage. Her accoutrement was, indeed, a cause of heart-
burning, and almost of scandal, in that infinitesimal kirk company.
Mrs. Hob had said her say at Cauldstaneslap. "Daft-like!" she had
pronounced it. "A jaiket that'll no meet! Whaur's the sense of a
jaiket that'll no button upon you, if it should come to be weet? What
do ye ca' thir things? Demmy brokens, d'ye say? They'll be brokens wi'
a vengeance or ye can win back! Weel, I have nae thing to do wi' it -
it's no good taste." Clem, whose purse had thus metamorphosed his
sister, and who was not insensible to the advertisement, had come to the
rescue with a "Hoot, woman! What do you ken of good taste that has
never been to the ceety?" And Hob, looking on the girl with pleased
smiles, as she timidly displayed her finery in the midst of the dark
kitchen, had thus ended the dispute: "The cutty looks weel," he had
said, "and it's no very like rain. Wear them the day, hizzie; but it's
no a thing to make a practice o'." In the breasts of her rivals, coming
to the kirk very conscious of white under-linen, and their faces
splendid with much soap, the sight of the toilet had raised a storm of
varying emotion, from the mere unenvious admiration that was expressed
in a long-drawn "Eh!" to the angrier feeling that found vent in an
emphatic "Set her up!" Her frock was of straw-coloured jaconet muslin,
cut low at the bosom and short at the ankle, so as to display her DEMI-
BROQUINS of Regency violet, crossing with many straps upon a yellow
cobweb stocking. According to the pretty fashion in which our