In the house which stood next to Nanny's lived Nelly Jackson, who was rather a shrewd, thinking woman, and in some respects the very antithesis of the former. She had brought her husband four children, most of whom were grown up. They had, however, upon several occasions, been seriously indisposed; but their mother, who already knew Nanny's propensity for peopling the other world, and who, with a creditable degree of penetration, guessed the effect which the ominous shake of her head, and her usual "ay, ay," were likely to have upon the mind of a distressed person, carefully prevented her from getting to their presence while they were ill; and though Nanny did not fail to foretell their fate, in her usual significant way, among her other neighbours, by some mistake they all recovered. Nanny accounted herself not only neglected but insulted, by not being allowed to exercise her benevolence in visiting the sick at all seasons; Nelly, on the other hand, having seen her predictions falsified in the case of her own children, began to doubt that neither her foresight nor her piety were superior to those of others; she even ventured to speak rather slightingly of both, affirming that "nothing gave Nanny greater pleasure than to see her neighbours dying;" which speeches were borne to the ears of Nanny; and thus, though they neither came to fistycuffs nor high words, there was little love between them.
Next to Nelly, on the other side, lived Margaret M'Kenzie, her husband, and a daughter, whose name was Mary. Margaret was an honest, industrious, and, in most respects, a sensible woman; but, from the circumstance of having been accustomed to listen to it for a length of time, her neighbour Nanny's belief in the preternatural had acquired a considerable ascendency in her mind, and often influenced her thoughts; so that she might be regarded as a sort of medium between the two characters already described. She had born to her husband a son and a daughter; the former of whom had learned a trade and left them: but Mary, who when young was rather a delicate girl, had always been kept at home. To accommodate and keep her as comfortable as possible, a small apartment, with a chimney and a back window, had been fitted up in the _ben end_ of the house; and in this little sanctum, besides assisting her mother with the household concerns, she had earned her own subsistence with her needle for several years. Her constitution, of late, however, had greatly improved; and at nineteen--the time at which our story commences--she was a healthy, handsome, and, upon the whole, rather a good-looking young woman.