I looked at the man and just smiled.  He richt frae the start!  It was he had told me not to sing ma Scottish songs—­that English audiences were tired o’ everything that had to do wi’ a kilt or a pair o’ brogues!  But I let it pass.

“Oh, aye,” I said, “they liked them fine, didn’t they?  So ye’re thinkin’ I’d better sing more Scotch the rest o’ the week?”

“Better?” he said, and he laughed.  “You’ll have no choice, man.  What one audience has heard the next one knows about.  They’ll make you sing those songs again, whether or no.”

I’ve found that that is so—­’deed, I knew it before he did.  I never appear but that I’ve requests for practically every song I’ve ever sung.  Some one remembers hearing me before when I was including them, or they’ve heard someone speak.  I’ve been asked within a year to sing “Torralladdie”—­the song I won a medal wi’ at Glasga while I was still workin’ in the pit at Hamilton!  No evening is lang enow to sing all my songs in—­all those I’ve gi’en my friends in my audiences at one time and anither in all these nearly thirty years I’ve been upon the stage.  Else I’d be tryin’ it, for the gude fun it wad be.

Anyway, every nicht after that the audience wanted its wee drappie o’ Scotch, and got it, in good measure, for I love to sing the Scottish songs.  And when the week was at an end I was promptly re-engaged for a return visit the next season, at the biggest salary that had yet been offered to me.  I was a prood man the day; I felt it was a great thing that had come to me, there on the banks o’ the Mersey, sae far frae hame and a’, in the England they’d a’ tauld me was hae nane o’ me and ma sangs!

And that week was a turning point in ma life, tae.  It chanced that, what wi’ ane thing and anither, I was free for the next twa-three weeks.  I’d plenty of engagements I could get, ye’ll ken, but I’d not closed ma time yet wi’ anyone.  Some plans I’d had had been changed.  So there I was.  I could gang hame, and write a letter or twa, and be off in a day or so, singing again in the same auld way.  Or—­I could do what a’ my friends tauld me was madness and worse to attempt.  What did I do?  I bocht a ticket for London!

CHAPTER X

There was method in my madness, tho’, ye’ll ken.  Here was I, nearer far to London, in Birkenhead than I was in Glasga.  Gi’en I was gae’in there some time, I could save my siller by going then.  So off I went—­ resolved to go and look for opportunity where opportunity lived.

Ye’ll ken I could see London was no comin’ after me—­didna like the long journey by train, maybe.  So I was like Mahomet when the mountain wouldna gang to him.  I needed London mair then than London needed me, and ‘twas no for me to be prood and sit twiddlin’ my thumbs till times changed.