“Duffy’s failin’; there’s nae doot o’t. He has a hump on him wi’ carryin’ bags o’ chape coal and dross up thae new, genteel, tiled stairs, and he let’s on it’s jist a knot in his gallowses, but I ken better. I’m as straucht as a wand mysel’--faith, I micht weel be, for a’ that I get to cairry hame frae ony o’ the dinners nooadays. I’ve seen the day, when Blythswood Square and roond aboot it was a’ the go, that it was coonted kind o’ scrimp to let a waiter hame withoot a heel on him like yin o’ thae Clyde steamers gaun oot o’ Rothesay quay on a Fair Settu’rday. “Noo they’ll ripe your very hip pooches for fear ye may be takin’ awa’ a daud o’ custard, or the toasted crumbs frae a dish o’ pheasant. “They needna’ be sae awfu’ feart, some o’ them. I ken their dinners--cauld, clear, bane juice, wi’ some strings o’ vermicelli in’t; ling-fish hash; a spoonfu’ o’ red-currant jeely, wi’ a piece o’ mutton the size o’ a domino in’t, if ye had time to find it, only ye’re no’ playin’ kee-hoi; a game croquette that’s jist a flaff o’ windy paste; twa cheese straws; four green grapes, and a wee lend o’ a pair o’ silver nut-crackers, the wife o’ the hoose got at her silver weddin’. “Man! it’s a rale divert! I see big, strong, healthy Bylies and members o’ the Treds’ Hoose and the Wine, Speerit, and Beer Tred risin’ frae dinners like that, wi’ their big, braw, gold watch-chains hingin’ doon to their knees. “As I tell Jinnet mony a time, it’s women that hae fair ruined dinner-parties in oor generation. They tak’ the measure o’ the appetities o’ mankind by their ain, which hae been a’thegether spoiled wi’ efternoon tea, and they think a man can mak’ up wi’ music in the drawin’-room for whit he didna get at the dinner-table. “I’m a temperate man mysel’, and hae to be, me bein’ a beadle, but I whiles wish we had back the auld days I hae read aboot, when a laddie was kept under the table to lowse the grauvats o’ the gentlemen that fell under’t, in case they should choke themsel’s. Scotland was Scotland then! “If they choked noo, in some places I’ve been in, it wad be wi’ thirst. “The last whisk o’ the petticoat’s no roon’ the stair-landin’ when the man o’ the hoose puts the half o’ his cigarette bye for again, and says, ‘The ladies will be wonderin’ if we’ve forgotten them,’ and troosh a’ the puir deluded craturs afore him up the stair into the drawin’-room where his wife Eliza’s maskin’ tea, and a lady wi’ tousy hair’s kittlin’ the piano till it’s sair. “‘Whit’s your opinion about Tschaikovski?’ I heard a wumman ask a Bylie at a dinner o’ this sort the ither nicht. “‘I never heard o’ him,’ said the Bylie, wi’ a gant, ‘but if he’s in the proveesion tred, there’ll be an awfu’ run on his shop the morn’s morn’.’