s way home, next morning after breakfast, Maister Whitteraick
found he was shot through the heart with a stound of love; and that,
unless a suitable remedy could be got, there was no hope for him on this
side of time, let alone blowing out his brains, or standing before the
minister. Right it was in him to run the risk of deciding on the last;
and so well did he play his game, that, in two months from that date,
after sending sundry presents on his part to the family, of smeaked hams
and salt tongues--acknowledged on theirs, by return of carrier, in the
shape of sucking pigs, jargonelle pears, skim-milk cheeses, and such
like--matters were soldered; and Miss Jeanie Learig, made into Mrs
Whitteraick by the blessing of Dr Blether, rode away into Edinburgh in a
post-chaise, with a brown and a black horse, one blind, and the other
lame, seated cheek-by-jowl with her loving spouse, who, doubtless, was
busked out in his best, with a Manchester superfine blue coat, and double
gilt buttons, a waterproof hat, silk stockings, with open-steek gushats,
and bright yellow shamoy gloves.

A stranger among strangers, and not knowing how she might thole the
company and conversation of town-life, Mrs Whitteraick that was to be,
hired a bit wench of a lassie from the neighbourhood, that was to follow
her, come the term. And who think ye should this lassie be, but Nanse
Cromie--afterwards, in the course of a kind Providence, the honoured wife
of my bosom, and the mother of bonny Benjie.

In going up and down the stairs--it being a common entry, ye observe--me
maybe going down with my everyday hat on to my dinner, and she coming up,
carrying a stoup of water, or half-a-pound of pouthered butter on a
plate, with a piece paper thrown over it--we frequently met half-way, and
had to stand still to let one another pass. Nothing came out of these
fore-gatherings, howsomever, for a month or two, she being as shy and
modest as she was bonny, with her clean demity short-gown, and snow-white
morning mutch, to say nothing of her cherry mouth, and her glancing eyes;
and me unco douffie in making up to strangers. We could not help,
nevertheless, to take aye a stolen look of each other in passing; and I
was a gone man, bewitched out of my seven senses, falling from my
clothes, losing my stomach, and over the lugs in love, three weeks and
some odd days before ever a single syllable passed between us.

Gude kens how long this Quaker-meeting-like silen