2403. The quality of the thing was so good, that you wanted to have it at any price?-Yes, and I could charge a small profit on it; but I cannot do that on the great bulk of the things I get. 2404. Did you pay for that in cash because it was an exceptional article?-I paid for it in cash because I wanted it. I would do the same for anything I wanted; but when goods are forced upon us, and goods asked for them, we cannot be expected to put our hands into the till and pay out cash for them. 2405. Are goods forced upon you?-Yes. 2406. Have you no option but to buy them?-No. That is not the meaning of my words. I do not mean that we are forced to buy them, in that sense. I mean, that people come in importuning us to buy goods which we do not want. 2407. You do buy them, however?-Sometimes, and sometimes not. 2408. Is it in consequence of the importunity of your customers that you buy them?-Sometimes, and sometimes not. 2409. But you say that sometimes you are forced by the importunity of your customers to buy their goods?-Yes; we may be induced to do it by an importunate woman. 2410. And when the importunity is so great that you are constrained to buy them, are these the cases in which you pay in goods?-No; the people often don't want the cash. They don't ask for it. They come to us with the general understanding that the, trade is done in goods-I mean in barter. 2411. Do you say the general understanding is that the payment is to be in goods, and also that you have sometimes to buy goods because you are importuned to do so?-Decidedly. I say I do buy them sometimes, because I cannot get rid of the customer otherwise, but these are exceptional cases. 2412. Is it because of the importunity, or because it is the general custom, that the payment is in goods?-That has been a tradition from time immemorial. 2413. But you have assigned the fact of paying in goods to both of these causes, and I wish to know which of them it is that you really refer it to?-It is sometimes the one and sometimes the other. 2414. But you are not obliged to buy hosiery and pay with goods unless you like?-Not at all; nor for money either. What I stated was, that I would rather pay in cash for a good article which I can sell again, than purchase a thing on barter that I have a great risk in selling. That is the whole import and purpose of what I said. 2415. You instanced one transaction,-that which you had with Elizabeth Gifford?-Yes; and there is another girl, Catherine Brown, who is in Leith just now, from whom I bought a great number of shawls, and paid her cash down for them. 2416. Was that long ago?-It has gone over a number of years. 2417. Was your reason for paying the cash the same in that case: because the articles which you got from her were good?-Yes; they were prime articles.