by
a freer intercourse, we thought less and less of them, until, poor
bodies, the bit prideful lairdies were just looked down upon by our
gawsie big-bellied burgesses, not a few of whom had heritable bonds on
their estates. But in this I am speaking of the change when it had come
to a full head; for in verity it must be allowed that when the country
gentry, with their families, began to intromit among us, we could not
make enough of them. Indeed, we were deaved about the affability of old
crabbit Bodle of Bodletonbrae, and his sister, Miss Jenny, when they
favoured us with their company at the first inspection ball. I'll ne'er
forgot that occasion; for being then in my second provostry, I had, in
course of nature, been appointed a deputy lord-lieutenant, and the town-
council entertaining the inspecting officers, and the officers of the
volunteers, it fell as a duty incumbent on me to be the director of the
ball afterwards, and to the which I sent an invitation to the laird and
his sister little hoping or expecting they would come. But the laird,
likewise being a deputy lord-lieutenant, he accepted the invitation, and
came with his sister in all the state of pedigree in their power. Such a
prodigy of old-fashioned grandeur as Miss Jenny was!--but neither shop
nor mantuamaker of our day and generation had been the better o't. She
was just, as some of the young lasses said, like Clarissa Harlowe, in the
cuts and copperplates of Mrs Rickerton's set of the book, and an older
and more curious set than Mrs Rickerton's was not in the whole town;
indeed, for that matter, I believe it was the only one among us, and it
had edified, as Mr Binder the bookseller used to say, at least three
successive generations of young ladies, for he had himself given it twice
new covers. We had, however, not then any circulating library. But for
all her antiquity and lappets, it is not to be supposed what respect and
deference Miss Jenny and her brother, the laird, received--nor the small
praise that came to my share, for having had the spirit to invite them.
The ball was spoken of as the genteelest in the memory of man, although
to my certain knowledge, on account of the volunteers, some were there
that never thought to mess or mell in the same chamber with Bodletonbrae
and his sister, Miss Jenny.

CHAPTER XXXV--TESTS OF SUCCESS

Intending these notations for the instruction of posterity, it would not
be altogether becoming of m