“But ye shouldna laugh sae loud, Master Dick,”
said the master of capers; “he hasna had the
advantage of a real gracefu’ teacher, as ye
have had; and troth, if he listed to tak some lessons,
I think I could make some hand of his feet, for he
is a souple chield, and has a gallant instep of his
ain; and sic a laced hat hasna been seen on the causeway
of Middlemas this mony a day.—Ye are standing
laughing there, Dick Middlemas; I would have you be
sure he does not cut you out with your bonny partner
yonder.”
“He be——!” Middlemas was
beginning a sentence which he could not have concluded
with strict attention to propriety, when the master
of the band summoned McFittoch to his post, by the
following ireful expostulation:—“What
are ye about, sir? Mind your bow-hand. How
the deil d’ye think three fiddles is to keep
down a bass, if yin o’ them stands girning and
gabbling as ye’re doing? Play up, sir!”
Dick Middlemas, thus reduced to silence, continued,
from his lofty station, like one of the gods of the
Epicureans, to survey what passed below, without the
gaieties which he witnessed being able to excite more
than a smile, which seemed, however, rather to indicate
a good-humoured contempt for what was passing, than
a benevolent sympathy with the pleasures of others.
Now hold thy tongue, Billy Bewick,
he said,
Of peaceful talking: let me be;
But if thou art a man, as I think thou art,
Come ower the dyke and fight with me.
BORDER MINSTRELSY.
On the morning after this gay evening, the two young
men were labouring together in a plot of ground behind
Stevenlaw’s Land, which the Doctor had converted
into a garden, where he raised, with a view to pharmacy
as well as botany, some rare plants, which obtained
the place from the vulgar the sounding name of the
Physic Garden. [Footnote: The Botanic Garden
is so termed by the vulgar of Edinburgh.] Mr. Gray’s
pupils readily complied with his wishes, that they
would take some care of this favourite spot, to which
both contributed their labours, after which Hartley
used to devote himself to the cultivation of the kitchen
garden, which he had raised into this respectability
from a spot not excelling a common kail-yard, while
Richard Middleman did his utmost to decorate with
flowers and shrubs a sort of arbour, usually called
Miss Menie’s bower.
At present they were both in the botanic patch of
the garden, when Dick Middlemas asked Hartley why
he had left the ball so soon the evening before?
“I should rather ask you,” said Hartley,
“what pleasure you felt in staying there?—I
tell you, Dick, it is a shabby low place this Middlemas
of ours. In the smallest burgh in England, every
decent freeholder would have been asked if the Member
gave a ball.”
“What, Hartley!” said his companion, “are
you, of all men, a candidate for the honour of mixing
with the first-born of the earth? Mercy on us!
How will canny Northumberland [throwing a true northern
accent on the letter R] acquit himself? Methinks
I see thee in thy pea-green suit, dancing a jig with
the honourable Miss Maddie MacFudgeon, while chiefs
and thanes around laugh as they would do at a hog in
armour!”
