each.  It was an immense success; we could have disposed of twice the number; every pretty girl’s admirer wanted a copy of her picture, and the portraits of the presiding “meenister” and of the good-looking unmarried curate were eagerly purchased by fond mammas and adoring daughters.  We had our fun, and cleared besides a profit of nearly four pounds sterling.  This financial coup would not have come off so well but for the warm-hearted co-operation of our railway printers, McCorquodale and Coy.  They, good people, entered into our exploit with a will, did their part well, and made little if any profit, generously leaving that to Cynicus and myself.

To his mother, like many another clever son, Cynicus owed his talent.  She was a woman of great intellectual endowment, with highly cultivated literary tastes.  Her memory was remarkable and her conversational powers very great.  She read much and thought deeply.  In a modest way her parlour, which attracted many young people of literary and artistic leanings, recalled the Salons of France of a century ago.  She entertained charmingly with tea and cakes and delightful talk.  Of strong, firm, decided character, she might, perhaps, have been thought a little deficient in womanly gentleness had not genuine kindness of heart, motherly feeling, and a happy humour lent a softness to her features and imparted to them a particular charm.  She exercised an authority over her household which inspired respect and contrasted strikingly with the easy-going parental ways of to-day.  There were other sons and there were daughters also, all more or less gifted, but Cynicus was the genius of the family—­its bright particular star.

The various lodgings of my bachelor days was never quite of the conventional sort.  The Cambuslang quarters certainly were not.  The house was large and old-fashioned.  Originally it had been two smallish houses:  the two front doors still remained side by side, but only one was used.  The rooms on the ground floor were small, the original building composed of one storey only, but another had been added of quite spacious dimensions.  We had two excellent, large well-furnished rooms upstairs.  The landlady was an interesting character and so was her husband.  She was Irish, he Scotch; she about seventy years of age, he under fifty; she ruddy, healthy, hearty, good-looking; he, pale, nervous, shy, retiring.  But on the last Thursday of each month he was quite another man.  On that day he went to Glasgow to collect the rents of some small houses he owned; and generally came home rather “fou” and hilarious, when the old lady would take him in hand, and put him to bed.

They had an only child, a son, a grown up man, an uncouth ill-looking ungainly fellow, who did no work, smoked and loafed about, but was the idol of his mother.  He resembled neither parent in the least, and, except that such vagaries of nature are not unknown, it might have been supposed that some cuckoo had visited the parental nest.