yet it begins to be the common talk of Gandercleuch, both up the water
and down the water, that the usher both writes the dominie's books and
teaches the dominie's school. Ay, ay, ask maid, wife, or widow, and
she'll tell ye, the least gaitling among them all comes to Paul
Pattison with his lesson as naturally as they come to me for their
four-hours, puir things; and never ane things of applying to you aboot
a kittle turn or a crabbed word, or about ony thing else, unless it
were for _licet exire_, or the mending of an auld pen."

Now this address assailed me on a summer evening, when I was whiling
away my leisure hours with the end of a cutty pipe and indulging in
such bland imaginations as the Nicotian weed is wont to produce, more
especially in the case of the studious persons, devoted _musis
severioribus_. I was naturally loth to leave my misty sanctuary; and
endeavoured to silence the clamour of Mrs. Cleishbotham's tongue, which
has something in it peculiarly shrill and penetrating. "Woman," said I
with a tone of domestic authority befitting the occasion, "_res tuas
agas_;--mind your washings and your wringings, your stuffings and
your physicking, or whatever concerns the outward persons of the pupils,
and leave the progress of their education to my usher, Paul Pattison,
and myself."

"I am glad to see," added the accursed woman, (that I should say so!)
"that ye have the grace to name him foremost, for there is little doubt,
that he ranks first of the troop, if ye wad but hear what the
neighbours speak--or whisper."

"What do they whisper, thou sworn sister of the Eumenides?" cried I,--
the irritating _aestrum_ of the woman's objurgation totally
counterbalancing the sedative effects both of pipe and pot.