I remember that Dugald one day, as we sat at table, after looking at his hands—they had become awfully brown—suddenly said to Moncrieff,

'Oh, by the by, Brother Moncrieff, there is one thing that I'm ready to wager you forgot to bring out with you from England.'

'What was that?' said Moncrieff, looking quite serious.

'Why, a supply of kid gloves, white and coloured.'

We all laughed. 149

'My dear boy,' said this huge brother of ours, 'the sun supplies the kid gloves, and it strikes me, lad, you've a pair of coloured ones already.'

'Yes,' said Dugald, 'black-and-tan.'

'But, dear laddies,' old Jenny put in, 'if ye really wad like mittens, I'll shortly shank a curn for ye.'

'Just listen to the old braid Scotch tongue o' that mither o' moine—"shortly shank a curn."[5] Who but an Aberdonian could understand that?'

But indeed poor old Jenny was a marvel with her 'shank,' as she called her knitting, and almost every third day she turned off a splendid pair of rough woollen stockings for one or other of her bairns, as she termed us generically. And useful weather-defiant articles of hosiery they were too. When our legs were encased in these, our feet protected by a pair of double-soled boots, and our ankles further fortified by leather gaiters, there were few snakes even we were afraid to tackle.