The copying was a weary business, the more so as I perceived very early there was no sort of urgency in the matters treated, and began very early to consider my employment a pretext. I had no sooner finished, than I got to horse, used what remained of daylight to the best purpose, and being at last fairly benighted, slept in a house by Almond-Water side. I was in the saddle again before the day, and the Edinburgh booths were just opening when I clattered in by the West Bow and drew up a smoking horse at my lord Advocate's door. I had a written word for Doig, my lord's private hand that was thought to be in all his secrets, a worthy, little plain man, all fat and snuff and self-sufficiency. Him I found already at his desk and already bedabbled with maccabaw, in the same anteroom where I rencountered with James More. He read the note scrupulously through like a chapter in his Bible.
"H'm," says he, "ye come a wee thing ahint-hand, Mr. Balfour. The bird's flaen, we hae letten her out."
"Achy!" said he. "What would we keep her for, ye ken? To hae made a steer about the bairn would hae pleased naebody."
"She'll have gone home to Lady Allardyce, I'm thinking," said I.
"But ye'll be for a bite or ye go?" said he.
"Neither bite nor sup," said I. "I had a good waucht of milk in by Ratho."
"Aweel, aweel," says Doig. "But ye'll can leave your horse here and your bags, for it seems we're to have your up-put."
"Na, na," said I. "Tamson's mear[17] would never be the thing for me, this day of all days."
Doig speaking somewhat broad, I had been led by imitation into an accent much more countrified than I was usually careful to affect, a good deal broader indeed than I have written it down; and I was the more ashamed when another voice joined in behind me with a scrap of a ballad:
"Gae saddle me the bonny black, Gae saddle sune and mak' him ready, For I will down the Gatehope-slack, And a' to see my bonny leddy."
The young lady, when I turned to her, stood in a morning gown, and her hands muffled in the same, as if to hold me at a distance. Yet I could not but think there was kindness in the eye with which she saw me.
"My best respects to you, Mistress Grant," said I bowing.
"The like to yourself, Mr. David," she replied, with a deep courtesy, "And I beg to remind you of an old musty saw, that meat and mass never hindered man. The mass I cannot afford you, for we are all good Protestants. But the meat I press on your attention. And I would not wonder but I could find something for your private ear that would be worth the stopping for."