could lay her finger on that particular part of Sacred Writ which is the foundation of the generally-received maxim, “One may do what one likes with one’s own.”  No doubt, she knew another passage in the same volume with a very different meaning; but then Mrs. Dodds did not wish to remember that, or to obey it when she did remember it; and we are to consider, without going back to that crazy school of which a certain Aristippus was the dominie, that wishing or not wishing has a considerable influence upon the aspects of moral truth, if it does not exercise over them a kind of legerdemain of which we are unconscious, whereby it changes one of these aspects into another, even when these are respectively to each other as white is to black.  This “claim of right” does not generally look peaceful.  No more it should; for it is clearly enough against nature; and one seldom kicks at her without getting sore toes.  True enough, there do appear cases where it seems to work pretty well; but when they are inquired into, it is generally found either that the husband is a simpleton, submitting by mere inanity, or a man who has resisted to the uttermost, and is at last crumpled up by pure “Caudlish” iteration and perseverance.  How Tammas took it may yet appear.

Proceeding with the peculiarities:  another of these was, that Mrs. Dodds, like her of Auchtermuchty, or Mrs. Grumlie, carried domesticity to devotion, scarcely anything in the world having any interest to her soul save what was contained in the house—­from Tammas, the chief article of furniture, down, through the mahogany table, to the porridge-pot; clouting, mending, darning, cleaning, scouring, washing, scraping, wringing, drying, roasting, boiling, stewing, being all of them done with such duty, love, and intensity of purpose, that they were veritable sacrifices to the lares.  This was doubtless a virtue; and as doubtless it was a vice, insomuch as, if we believe another old Greek pedagogue of the name of Aristotle, “all virtues are medial vices, and all vices extreme virtues.”  How Tammas viewed this question may also appear.  But we may proceed to state, that Mrs. Janet Dodds was not content with doing all those things with such severity of love or duty.  She was always telling herself what she intended to do, either at the moment or afterwards.  “This pan needs to be scoured.”  “Thae stockings maun be darned.”  “This sark is as black as the lum, and maun be plotted.”  “The floor needs scrubbing.”  “Tammas’s coat is crying, ’A steek in time saves nine,’ and by my faith it says true;” and so on.  Nor did it signify much whether Thomas or any other person was in the house at the time—­the words were not intended for anybody but herself; and to herself she persisted in telling them with a stedfastness which only the ears of a whitesmith could tolerate; even with the consideration that he was not, as so many are, deaved with scandal—­a delectation which Janet despised, if she did not care as little