13,182. Do people who have no balance against them, and who can get an unlimited supply of meal, come to you on Fridays along with the rest?-Sometimes, and sometimes not; they just come as they choose.
13,183. Do they frequently not come to you at all for meal?- There are few of them who don't come for meal; but the greater part of the men at Dunrossness are generally in good circumstances, and have the command of money, and they generally buy their meal in Lerwick, or where they can get it cheapest.
13,184. In looking at your books last night, of course I did not find the prices for meal entered for the year 1871?-No.
13,185. But I saw that a lispund of bear meal in 1870 was charged at 4s. 6d.?-I think the lispunds were 4s. 4d., and the quarter bolls 4s. 6d.
13,186. I noticed also that you sometimes charged what you call a lispund at a different price?-Yes; when we break a boll and sell it in quarters, we generally call it a lispund. Sometimes two or three men may get a boll and divide it among themselves, and it is generally charged to them as lispunds. That accounts for the lispund sometimes being charged at one price and sometimes at another.
13,187. When you do actually weigh out a quarter boll, you charge it at 4s. 6d.?-We seldom weigh that out. They take the boll and divide it among themselves; we seldom weigh it.
13,188. When the prices are not entered until the end of the season, how do you know whether to charge for a quarter boll or for a lispund, when you have put it in your book in the first instance as a lispund in both cases?-I had slips of paper or a little pass-book, and when we gave the meal out we had a line for the boll weight and a line for the lispund.
13,189. What is done with the lines?-We have some of them yet.
13,190. Do you file them?-No. We rule the small pass-book, and have a place in which we enter the lines, so many for lispunds, so many for bolls, and so many for quarter bolls, or whatever it may be.
13,191. Do you call that book the weighing-book?-Yes. It is generally only part of the meal that is entered there.