Edinburgh, as brave us a Hielander in search of a journeyman's place. I may set it down to an especial providence, that I found one, on the very first day, to my heart's content in by at the Grassmarket, where I stayed for the space of six calendar months.
Had it not been from a real sense of the duty I owed to my future employers, whomsoever they might be, in making myself a first-rate hand in the cutting, shaping, and sewing line, I would not have found courage in my breast to have helped me out through such a long and dreary time.
Never let us repine, howsomever, but consider that all is ordered for the best. The sons of the patriarch Jacob found out their brother Joseph in a foreign land, and where they least expected it: so it was here—even here where my heart was sickening unto death, from my daily and nightly thoughts being as bitter as gall— that I fell in with the greatest blessing of my life, Nanse Cromie!
In the flat below our workshop lived Mrs Whitterraick, the wife of Mr. Whitterraick, a dealer in hens and Hams in the poultry market, who coming from the Lauder neighbourhood had hired a bit wench of a lassie that was to follow them come the term. And who think ye should this lassie be, but Nanse Cromie, afterwards, in the course of a kind providence, the honoured wife of my bosom, and the mother of bonny Benjie.
In going up and down the stairs,—it being a common entry, ye observe—me may be going
