ectful and devoted partner.

In the meantime, the unwilling musician seemed heartily tired of his
employment, and looked as if he would have given a trifle not only to
have got quit of that employment, but to have got out of the house
altogether. Jones, however, was inexorable; and the more marked the
fiddler's impatience became, the more unmercifully did he deal out his
orders to "play up;" and much did he seem to delight, although he kept
the satisfaction to himself, in the grin of irritation which his
commands never failed to produce on the countenance of the hapless
musician. Leaving, then, the general position of matters in the kitchen
of the Drouthsloken in this state, we shall resume the particular
history of the laird's proceedings, which we fear the reader may think
we have already too long neglected.

Of the ongoings of the evening the laird, who was now pretty well in the
wind, was an attentive, but by no means a silent, spectator. In the
enthusiasm which the proceedings passing before him had excited, he had
mounted a chair, and from that elevated position was whooping, and
yelling, and shouting, and clapping his hands--at once to express his
own delight in the performances, and to encourage the performers.

"That's it, my bonny lassie!" he screamed out, addressing the younger
Tromp, whose agility particularly pleased him. "'Od ye're just doin
amazinly! That's it! Kilt yer coats, ye cutty, and skelp at it withouten
fear or dread! That's the true way to mak a figure on a flure!"

"Feth, no amiss, guidwife, no amiss ava," he said, and now addressing
himself to the better half of mine host of the Drouthsloken, who was
heaving like a seventy-four in a ground-swell--"no amiss ava, considerin
the wecht ye carry. Ye're just doin wonderfu, too, to be sae broad in
the beam. My word, but ye are a sonsy lass," he continued, his attention
gradually directing itself to a contemplation of her personal
dimensions. "If ye're an unce, ye're twenty stane, quarry wecht; and
everybody kens that's no scrimpit."

"Weel dune, Jones! weel dune, lad! Hoo, hurrah! up wi't! Ye've a pair o'
guid souple shanks o' your ain. That's it, lad--that's it! Up wi't! Hoo,
hurrah, hurrah!"

And the laird clapped his hands with a vigour and energy that emitted a
sound more like the contact of a pair of boards than human palms; and
accompanying this expression of heartiness of feeling with whoops and
shouts, that drowned the noise of both fee