“The days they tried new dishes frae the cookery lessons at hame, Duffy took his meat in the Western Cookin’ Depot, and cam’ hame when it was dark. Yin o’ them played the mandoline. The mandoline’s a noble instrument; it cheers the workman’s hame; a lassie gaun alang the street wi’ a nice print dress, and a case wi’ a mandoline’, is jist the sort I wad fancy mysel’ if I was a young yin and there wasna Jinnet. A fruiterer merried the mandoline. The nicht she was merrit, Duffy sang ‘Dark Lochnagar,’ and winked at me like a’ that.
“‘Learn your dochters the mandoline, Erchie,’ says he in my lug, ‘and they’ll gang aff your haunds like snaw aff a dyke. That’s the advice I wad gie ye if ye had ony dochters left. I wad hae made it the piano, but we couldna get a piano up past the bend on the stair.’
“Efter the mandoline went, the boys begood to scramble for Duffy’s dochters as if they were bowl-money. The close-mooth was never clear o’ cabs, and the rice was always up to your ankles on the stair. Duffy sang ‘Dark Lochnagar’ even-on, and aye kept winkin’ at me.
“‘That’s the mandoline awa’,’ says he, ‘and the scientific dressmakin’, and the shorthand, and the “Curfew must hot Ring To-night,” and the revival meetin’s, and the no’ very-weel yin that needs a nice quate hame; they’re a’ gane, Erchie, and I’m no’ gien jeely-dishes awa’ wi’ them either. I’m my lee-lane, me and Annie; if ony o’ thae chaps cam’ efter Annie, I wad chase him doon the stair.’
“‘Man! Duffy,’ I says till him, ‘ye’re selfish enough workin’ aff a’ them ornamental dochters on the young men o’ Gleska that did ye nae hairm, and keepin’ the best o’ the hale jing-bang in the hoose a’ the time in case they see her.’
“‘Let them tak’ it!’ says Duffy, ‘I’m no’ a bit vexed for them,’ and he started to sing ‘Dark Lochnagar’ as lood as ever, while Annie was puttin’ on his boots.
“That was in Duffy’s auld days. He merried a second wife, and it was a fair tak’-in, for he thocht a wee greengrocer’s shop she had was her ain, and a’ the time it was her brither’s.
“‘That’s the mandoline for you, Duffy,’ says I, when he tellt me.
“But that yin died on him too; she died last Mertinmas; Duffy’s kind o’ oot o’ wifes the noo. And the warst o’t is that his dochter Annie’s gettin’ merried.”