This eminent success reconciled Jasper to the dominion which his wife began to assume over him; and which was much confirmed by her proving to be--let me see--what is the prettiest mode of expressing it?--in the family way. On this occasion, Mrs. Yellowley had a remarkable dream, as is the usual practice of teeming mothers previous to the birth of an illustrious offspring. She "was a-dreamed," as her husband expressed it, that she was safely delivered of a plough, drawn by three yoke of Angus-shire oxen; and being a mighty investigator into such portents, she sat herself down with her gossips, to consider what the thing might mean. Honest Jasper ventured, with much hesitation, to intimate his own opinion, that the vision had reference rather to things past than things future, and might have been occasioned by his wife's nerves having been a little startled by meeting in the loan above the house his own great plough with the six oxen, which were the pride of his heart. But the good _cummers_[20] raised such a hue and cry against this exposition, that Jasper was fain to put his fingers in his ears, and to run out of the apartment.
"Hear to him," said an old whigamore carline--"hear to him, wi' his owsen, that are as an idol to him, even as the calf of Bethel! Na, na--it's nae pleugh of the flesh that the bonny lad-bairn--for a lad it sall be--sall e'er striddle between the stilts o'--it's the pleugh of the spirit--and I trust mysell to see him wag the head o' him in a pu'pit; or, what's better, on a hill-side."
"Now the deil's in your whiggery," said the old Lady Glenprosing; "wad ye hae our cummer's bonny lad-bairn wag the head aff his shouthers like your godly Mess James Guthrie,(_g_) that ye hald such a clavering about?--Na, na, he sall walk a mair siccar path, and be a dainty curate--and say he should live to be a bishop, what the waur wad he be?"
The gauntlet thus fairly flung down by one sibyl, was caught up by another, and the controversy between presbytery and episcopacy raged, roared, or rather screamed, a round of cinnamon-water serving only like oil to the flame, till Jasper entered with the plough-staff; and by the awe of his presence, and the shame of misbehaving "before the stranger man," imposed some conditions of silence upon the disputants.