I started to my feet, visions of sleepwalkers and lunatics thronging through my imagination, but was caught hold of by Nanny, who, shaking with suppressed laughter, whispered me, while the tears ran out and danced upon her long lashes for very fun, that it was only precious Aleck, "wham Jeanie had cled in her bit wyliecoat, since she dauredna wake the house to look for aught else;" then, laying her hand upon my shoulder (and the wet oozed from between her fingers), she proposed, with a maidenly mixture of kindliness and hesitation, that I should go and do so likewise. Who knows how I might have stood the temptation, had she not in time perceived my error, and, blushing deeply, explained, that as Aleck had done--undressed himself alone--so should I. Under these stipulations, I declined parting with more than my coat, for which she substituted a curiously quilted coverlet; then bringing me warm water, insisted on my bathing my feet. I gladly consented; but hardly had I pulled off the coarse stockings, and washed the black soil from my hands, when there began a grievous coughing and grumbling in the room from which the girls had come. "Lord haud a grip o' us!" cried Aleck; "it's auld _Peg_ hoastin'--De'il wauken her, the cankered rush! she'll breed a bonny splore gin she finds me here." "Whisht, whisht," whispered Nanny, "she's as keen as colly i' the lugs; and glegger than baudrons i' the dark." The libelled Mistress Margaret gave no further time for calumniation; slamming open the door, she came down upon us, gaunt, grim, and unescapable--"Ye menseless tawpies! ye bauld cutties! ye wanton limmers! ye--_wha's this_?" She snatched the light from Nannie's hand, and poked it close to my face--"Wha's this? I say, wha's this?" "Hoots, woman!" cried Nanny, spiritedly, yet with an air of conciliation, "I'se bail ye mony a boy has come over the moss to crack wi' yoursell when ye were a lassie." "_When_ I was a lassie!" I thought she would have choked; but her indignation at last made its way up in thunder upon my devoted head. "Wha are ye? what are ye? what fetches ye sornin' here? ye----" Nanny again interposed. "He's just a weaver lad, I tell ye, that Aleck Lowther fetched frae the Langslap Moss to keep him company." "A weaver lad!" (I had raised my foot to the rim of the tub, and sat with my chin upon my hand, and my elbow on my knee, laughing, to the great aggravation of her anger). "A weaver lad!--there's ne'er a wabster o' the Langslap Moss wi' siccan a leg as that!--there's ne'er a ane o' a' the creeshy clan wha's shins arena bristled as red as a belly rasher!--there's ne'er a wabster o' the Langslap Moss wi' the track o' a ring upon his wee finger!--there's ne'er a wabster o' the Langslap Moss wi' aughteen hunner linen in his sark-frill!--Jamie, hoi! Jamie Steenson, here's a spy!"