“Na, na, Mister Jeames, my gude man that’s dead an’ gane said to me, the verra day that he made me his ain—‘Katie, ye are nae bonnie, but ye a’ gude, which is a’ hantle better.’” “No doubt he was right, Mrs. Waddel; but I really think he was very ungallant to say so on his wedding-day, and did not do you half justice.” “Weel, weel,” said the good dame, “every ain to his taste. He was not ow’r gifted that way himsel; but we are nane sensible o’ our ain defects.” The great attraction in the small, windowless closet in which James slept, was an enormous calabash, which her son, the idol of Mrs. Waddel’s heart, had brought home with him from the South Seas. Over this calabash, the simple-hearted mother daily rehearsed all the wonderful adventures she had gathered from that individual, during his short visits home; and as she possessed a surprisingly retentive memory, her maternal reminiscences would have filled volumes,—to all of which James listened with the most earnest attention, not on account of the adventures, for they were commonplace enough, but for the mere pleasure of hearing Mrs. Waddel talk broad Scotch, from which he seemed to derive the most ludicrous enjoyment. Mrs. Waddel had two daughters, to whom nature had been less bountiful than even to herself. Tall, awkward, shapeless dawdles, whose unlovely youth was more repulsive than the mother’s full-blown, homely age,—with them the old lady’s innocent obliquity of vision had degenerated into a downright squint, and the redness round the rims of their large, fishy-looking, light eyes, gave the idea of perpetual weeping,—a pair of Niobes, versus the beauty, whose swollen orbs were always dissolved in tears. They crept slip-shod about the house, their morning wrappers fitting so easily their slovenly figures, that you expected to see them suddenly fall to the ground, and the young ladies walk on in native simplicity. “My daughters are like mysel—na’ bonnie,” said Mrs. Waddel. “They dinna’ tak’ wi’ the men folk, wha look mair to comeliness than gudeness now-a-days in a wife. A’ weel, every dog maun ha’ his day, an’ they may get husbands yet. “I weel remember, when Noncy was a bairn, she was the maist ugsome wee thing I ever clappit an e’e upon. My Leddy W. lodged in this verra room, in the which we are no’ sittin’. She had a daughter nearly a woman grown, an’ I was in my sma’ back parlour washin’ an’ dressin’ the bairn. In runs my Leddy Grace, an’ she stood an’ lookit an’ lookit a lang time at the naked bairn in my lap: at last she clappit her hands an’ she called oot to her mither—‘Mamma! Mamma! for gudeness sake, come here, an’ look at this ugly, blear-eyed, bandy-legget child!—I never saw sic an object in a’ my life!’