“‘Hoots!’ says I to her, ‘whit’s the odds? There’s naebody heedin’ you nor your flittin’.’ “‘Are they no’?’ said Jinnet, keekin’ up at the front o’ the new land. ‘A’ the Venetian blinds is doon, and I’ll guarantee there’s een behind them.’
“We werena half-an-oor in the new hoose when the woman on the same stairheid chappet at the door and tellt us it was oor week o’ washin’ oot the close. It wasna weel meant, but it did Jinnet a lot o’ guid, for she was sitting in her braw new hoose greetin’.”
“Greetin’, Erchie? Why?”
“Ask that! Ye’ll maybe ken better nor I dae.”
“Well, you have earned your evening pipe at least, Erchie,” said I.
He knocked out its ashes on his palm with a sigh. “I hiv that! Man, it’s a gey dauntenin’ thing a flittin’, efter a’. I’ve a flet fit, but a warm hert; and efter thirty years o’ the auld hoose I was swear’t to leave’t. I brocht up a family in’t, and I wish Jinnet’s carpet had been a fit or twa shorter, or that I had never seen yon coal-scuttle wi’ the Falls o’ Clyde and Tillitudlem Castle.”
III DEGENERATE DAYS
The tred’s done,” said Erchie.