Thus, then, stood matters between these two rival houses of York and Lancaster, when Mrs Callender, on looking from one of her windows one day, observed that the head of her rival's husband, who was at the moment recreating himself in his garden, was comfortably set off with a splendid, new striped Kilmarnock nightcap. Now, when Mrs Callender saw this, and recollected the very shabby, faded article of the same denomination--"mair like a dish-cloot," as she muttered to herself, "than onything else"--which her Thomas wore, she determined on instantly providing him with a new one; resolved, as she also remarked to herself, not to let the Andersons beat her, even in the matter of a nightcap. But Mrs Callender not only resolved on rivalling her neighbour, in the matter of having a new nightcap for her husband, but in surpassing her in the quality of the said nightcap. She determined that her "man's" should be a red one; "a far mair genteeler thing," as she said to herself, "than John Anderson's vulgar striped Kilmarnock." Having settled this matter to her own satisfaction, and having dexterously prepared her husband for the vision of a new nightcap--which she did by urging sundry reasons, totally different from those under whose influence she really acted, as she knew that he would never give in to such an absurdity as a rivalship with his neighbour in the matter of a nightcap: this matter settled then, we say, the following day saw Mrs Callender sailing into Glasgow, to purchase a red nightcap for her husband--a mission which, we need not say, she very easily accomplished. Her choice was one of the brightest hue she could find--a flaming article, that absolutely dazzled Thomas with the intensity of its glare, when it was triumphantly unrolled before him. "Jenny," said the latter, in perfect simplicity of heart, and utter ignorance of the true cause of his wife's care of his comfort in the present instance--"Jenny, but that _is_ a bonny thing," he said, looking admiringly at the gaudy commodity, into which he had now thrust his hand and part of his arm, in order to give it all possible extension, and thus holding it up before him as he spoke. "Really it _is_ a bonny thing," he replied, "and, I warrant, a comfortable." "Isna't?" replied his wife, triumphantly. And she would have added, "How far prettier and mair genteeler a thing than John Anderson's!" But as this would have betrayed secrets, she refrained, and merely added, "Now, my man, Tammas, ye'll just wear't when ye gang about the doors and the yard. It'll mak' ye look decent and respectable--what ye wasna in that creeshy cloot that ye're wearin', that made ye look mair like a tauty bogle than a Christian man." Thomas merely smiled at these remarks, and made no reply in words.