Then ensued a discourse which I cannot render in the vernacular, more’s the pity, though I understood it all too well for my comfort. The substance of it was this: that she couldna and wouldna tak’ it in hand to give me a quarter section of cake when the other three-quarters might gae dry in the bakery; that the reason she sold the small piece on the former occasion was that her daughter, her son-in-law, and their three children came from Ballahoolish to visit her, and she gave them a high tea with no expense spared; that at this function they devoured three-fourths of a ginger-cake, and just as she was mournfully regarding the remainder my servant came in and took it off her hands; that she had kept a bakery for thirty years and her mother before her, and never had a two-shilling ginger-cake been sold in pieces before, nor was it likely ever to occur again; that if I, under Providence, so to speak, had been the fortunate gainer by the transaction, why not eat my six penny-worth in solemn gratitude once for all, and not expect a like miracle to happen the next week? And finally, that two-shilling ginger-cakes were, in the very nature of things, designed for large families; and it was the part of wisdom for small families to fix their affections on something else, for she couldna and wouldna tak’ it in hand to cut a rare and expensive article for a small customer.
The torrent of logic was over, and I said humbly that I would take the whole loaf.
“Verra weel, mam,” she responded more affably, “thank you kindly; no, I couldna tak’ it in hand to sell six pennyworth of that ginger-cake and let one-and-sixpence worth gae dry in the bakery.—A beautiful day, mam! Won’erful blest in weather ye are! Let me open your umbrella for you, mam!”
. . . .
David Robb is the weaver of Pettybaw. All day long he sits at his old-fashioned hand-loom, which, like the fruit of his toil and the dear old greybeard himself, belongs to a day that is past and gone.
He might have work enough to keep an apprentice busy, but where would he find a lad sufficiently behind the times to learn a humble trade now banished to the limbo of superseded, almost forgotten things?
His home is but a poor place, but the rough room in which he works is big enough to hold a deal of sweet content. It is cheery enough, too, to attract the Pettybaw weans, who steal in on wet days and sit on the floor playing with the thrums, or with bits of coloured ravellings. Sometimes when they have proved themselves wise and prudent little virgins, they are even allowed to touch the hanks of pink and yellow and blue yarn that lie in rainbow-hued confusion on the long deal table.
All this time the ‘heddles’ go up and down, up and down, with their ceaseless clatter, and David throws the shuttle back and forth as he weaves his old-fashioned winceys.
We have grown to be good friends, David and I, and I have been permitted the signal honour of painting him at his work.
The loom stands by an eastern window, and the rare Pettybaw sunshine filters through the branches of a tree, shines upon the dusty window-panes, and throws a halo round David’s head that he well deserves and little suspects. In my foreground sit Meg and Jean and Elspeth playing with thrums and wearing the fruit of David’s loom in their gingham frocks. David himself sits on his wooden bench behind the maze of cords that form the ‘loom harness.’