he would find our
way of doing so canny and comfortable, that it was not very likely he
could ever start objections; and I must confess, that I looked forward
with no small degree of pride, seeing the probability of my soon having
the son of a Lammermoor farmer sitting crosslegged, cheek for jowl with
me on the board, and bound to serve me at all lawful times, by night and
day, by a regular indenture of five years. Maister Glen insisted on the
laddie having a three months' trial; and then, after a trifling show of
standing out, just to make him aware that I could be elsewhere fitted if
I had a mind, I agreed that the request was reasonable, and that I had no
earthly objections to conforming with it. So, after giving him his
meridian and a bite of shortbread, we shook hands, and parted in the
understanding that his son would arrive on the top of limping Jamie the
carrier's cart, in the course, say, of a fortnight.

Through the whole of the forepart of the day, I remained rather queerish,
as if something was working about my inwards, and a droll pain between my
eyes. The wife saw the case I was in, and advised me, for the sake of
the fresh air, to take a step into the bit garden, and try a hand at the
spade, the smell of the new earth being likely to operate as a cordial;
but no--it would not do; and when I came in at one o'clock to my dinner,
the steam of the fresh broth, instead of making me feel, as usual, as
hungry as a hawk, was like to turn my stomach, while the sight of the
sheep's head, one of the primest ones I had seen the whole season,
looked, by all the world, like the head of a boiled blackamoor, and made
me as sick as a dog; so I could do nothing but take a turn out again, and
swig away at the small beer, that never seemed able to slocken my drouth.
At long and last, I minded having heard Andrew Redbeak, the
excise-officer, say, that nothing ever put him right after a debosh
except something they call a bottle of soda-water; so my wife dispatched
Benjie to the place where we knew it could be found, and he returned in a
jiffie with a thing like a blacking-bottle below his daidly, as he was
bidden. There being a wire over the cork for some purpose or other, or
maybe just to look neat, we had some fight to get it torn away, but at
last we succeeded. I had turned about for a jug, and the wife was
rummaging for the screw, while Benjie was fiddling away with his fingers
at the cork--Save us! all at once it ga