“Ay, all safe enough, along with the ticket. If I lose them, I lose all; and I may just as weel be coffined at once, and be done wi’t. Ye’re a young creature, and don’t know the miseries o’ the old.”
“And don’t want for a while,” said the other; “but where do you live?”
“In Lady Lawson’s Wynd,” was the reply.
“And how do you go home?”
“By Hunter Square and the Bridge,” said the simple woman; “for I’ve to go to Nicolson Square, where the factor lives, to pay him the nine shillings; but I doubt if he will ever get more, for now, with my blankets in the pawn, and nothing to redeem them, what is to cover me in the cold nights of winter?”
“What you can get, woman,” said the other, harshly, as I thought, at least without the feeling due to age and poverty; “just as I do, what we all do—the world to the winner.”
And what heartless creature can this young woman be? thought I, as, making a long neck, I looked round the side of the stair. My five times convicted Mary Anne Stewart, one of the nimblest pickpockets of the city, and for whom I was then looking as connected with a stolen plaid.
“Easy to say that,” continued the old woman, “when you’ve health and youth on your side; but don’t be too confident. I was once a winner when I won my poor husband; but what was there for me to win when I lost him who was the winner of my bread, and was left to fight the battle of life with nothing but my ten fingers? You’ve both to win and to lose yet, my lass; and may the Lord be kinder to you than He has been to me!”
“Best to look to one’s-self and one’s own pocket,” was the consistent reply of the winner, Mary Anne.
And to the pockets of others, said I to myself, the graceless baggage.