Burns paused. Nicol's counsels had generally some weight with him, more especially when, as at the present moment, after a merry afternoon, he was not perfectly certain of his actions.
'How'll I win at him? How will I touch him?' he said, flinging down the stick and frowning heavily.
'You've a full right to a pretty revenge,' said his friend; 'and surely you can't want of opportunity. The gate's open to you that gives you entry to the man's very hearth.'
'Ay, that's true,' said Burns, with a grin, as he thought of the cosy fireside in the Potterrow.
'Can't you make the fellow jealous?' said Nicol.
'If he had the passions of a buck-rabbit, weel could I!' said Burns, vindictively. 'For there's his lass--I caught him with her in the dark--and then, under his very nose, I had to pay her some particularity of attention in order to put him off the scent with my Clarinda. 'Tis that muckle lass you have some grudge against yourself.'
'Why, then,' cried Nicol, warming to congenial mischief, 'if we cannot brew a fine broth out of this bonny concatenation, the devil take us for silly, shiftless bodies! I'm none so loth, I can tell you, to have a fling at miss for all her haughty airs. You shall pretend to love her. Write to Master Lawyer; tell him you never dreamed to lift presumptuous eyes to his worship's exquisite relative, but are contented with her governante--or whatsoever the lass is. I'm thinking that will do our trick.'
'Eh?' said the poet, doubtfully. He was dazed with wine, and hardly understood the nature of that which was proposed to him. Nicol got the ink-pot, a sheet of paper, and a pen, which he thrust into his friend's somewhat unsteady hand.
'Write, now,' he began eagerly--'something in this style: "Honoured sir"--(letters in the third person are so damnably difficult to put, I can't away with them!)--"Honoured sir: I am in due receipt of your late favour, which hath awaited me at my lodging this long time in my absence on a journey. I crave your pardon for this delay in answering the same. I also crave your patience for offence given in the matter of my visits to the house of your honourable cousin, Mistress Maclehose. But sure, sir, you were not so mistaken, on the one occasion that we met there, as to confuse the object of my attention with any other. It was most assuredly not--as, sir, you might have seen--your honour's relative, who, in truth, is far above my sphere, but the young female abiding with her at this time. And I would humbly beg of your kindness not to interrupt this little affair of an honourable affection, which is like to be in a fair way to become reciprocal...."'