"Willie, laddie, gie me aff your stockings instantly. Preserve us! the callant has holes in their heels ye micht put yer nieve through!--There's what ye've dune wi' your running about without yer whings tied." "Hoot, mother," cried I, "I canna be fashed--darn them again' nicht." "I'll '_canna be fashed_' ye--ye lazy monkey, ye. Did your faither no gie ye aneugh for that no ten minutes syne, and ye'll tell me ony siccan a story!" She grippit me by the neck, and for my faither's ae clout she gied me ten, at every cuff saying, "I'll _canna be fashed_ ye!" And at last she threw aff my shoon, and pulled the stockings aff my legs, and pushed me awa frae her wi' a great drive, crying, "Now, only let me hear ye making use o' thae words again, and ye'll maybe see what I can be fashed to do." "Oh dear me!" thought I, "what ill have I done?" And I sat down, and I grat and I roared most heartily, and I kicked my bare feet upon the floor. "Kick awa there, my man," said my mother--for she was a woman that never got into what ye could call a passion in her family, as I have seen some mothers do--"kick awa there," says she; "and if ye drive a hole in the heels o' the stockings you've on now, ye'll darn them yoursel." But this, sir, was only the first thrashing that I got for "I canna be fashed"--it wasna the last, by a score o' times. My faither was a man that never liked to lay out a shilling where it could be saved; and he always grudged to employ other people to do anything when he thought it could be done within his own house--that is, by the members o' his own family--therefore, about the back end o' spring, or the fore end o' summer, he would have said to us-- "Now, bairns, haud awa to your beds, and before school-time the morn, gang and howe the potatoes, or weed the corn." I never durst say onything then, but slipped awa to bed very unwillingly--just feeling as if I felt it a trouble to put aff my claes. But before sunrise in the morning, when my brothers would have wakened me, I used to rub my een, and gaunt, and say-- "What!--what!--hoots!--I canna be fashed!" And my father, frae the ben-a-house, would have cried out, wi' a voice that made the very nails on my fingers shake, "What's that he's saying?--I'll _be fashed_ him!" Then up I would have got, shrugging my shoulders, and wriggling them frae side to side, and cried peevishly to one, "Where's my stockings?" and to another, "Where's my jacket?" Then my faither would have cried out again, "_I'll seek_ it for ye!" Then I soon found it, and got out o' the house wi' the rest o' them. It was precisely the same thing when my brothers used to shake me in a morning, and say-- "Get up, Willie--ye haena your task yet."