The negotiation was not without difficulties. Morton had first to bring
over the housekeeper, who made a thousand objections, as usual, in order
to have the pleasure of being besought and entreated; but, when she was
gained over, it was comparatively easy to induce old Milnwood to accept
of a servant, whose wages were to be in his own option. An outhouse was,
therefore, assigned to Mause and her son for their habitation, and it was
settled that they were for the time to be admitted to eat of the frugal
fare provided for the family, until their own establishment should be
completed. As for Morton, he exhausted his own very slender stock of
money in order to make Cuddie such a present, under the name of arles, as
might show his sense of the value of the recommendation delivered to him.

"And now we're settled ance mair," said: Cuddie to his mother, "and if
we're no sae bien and comfortable as we were up yonder, yet life's life
ony gate, and we're wi' decent kirk-ganging folk o' your ain persuasion,
mither; there will be nae quarrelling about that."

"Of my persuasion, hinnie!" said the too-enlightened Mause; "wae's me for
thy blindness and theirs. O, Cuddie, they are but in the court of the
Gentiles, and will ne'er win farther ben, I doubt; they are but little
better than the prelatists themsells. They wait on the ministry of that
blinded man, Peter Poundtext, ance a precious teacher of the Word, but
now a backsliding pastor, that has, for the sake of stipend and family
maintenance, forsaken the strict path, and gane astray after the black
Indulgence. O, my son, had ye but profited by the gospel doctrines ye hae
heard in the Glen of Bengonnar, frae the dear Richard Rumbleberry, that
sweet youth, who suffered martyrdom in the Grassmarket, afore Candlemas!
Didna ye hear him say, that Erastianism was as bad as Prelacy, and that
the Indulgence was as bad as Erastianism?"