"For twopence," responded the Scot at once.
A Scotsman wishing to know his fate at once, telegraphed a proposal of marriage to the lady of his choice. After spending the entire day at the telegraph office he was finally rewarded late in the evening by an affirmative answer.
"If I were you," suggested the operator when he delivered the message, "I'd think twice before I'd marry a girl that kept me waiting all day for my answer."
"Na, na," retorted the Scot. "The lass who waits for the night rates is the lass for me."
"Well, yes," said Old Uncle Lazzenberry, who was intimately acquainted with most of the happenstances of the village, "Almira Stang has broken off her engagement with Charles Henry Tootwiler. They'd be goin' together for about eight years, durin' which time she had been inculcatin' into him, as you might call it, the beauties of economy; but when she discovered, just lately, that he had learnt his lesson so well that he had saved up two hundred and seventeen pairs of socks for her to darn immediately after the wedding, she 'peared to conclude that he had taken her advice a little too literally, and broke off the match."—Puck.
They sat each at an extreme end of the horsehair sofa. They had been courting now for something like two years, but the wide gap between had always been respectfully preserved.
"A penny for your thochts, Sandy," murmured Maggie, after a silence of an hour and a half.