is countenance that subtle element
of humorous _canniness_ which has been accepted by many as the prime
attribute of his character. He may probably have had his own feelings in
view when he makes his Patie say in _The Gentle Shepherd_--

'The bees shall loath the flow'r, and quit the hive,
The saughs on boggy ground shall cease to thrive,
Ere scornfu' queans, or loss o' warldly gear,
Shall _spill_ my rest, or ever force a tear.'

His figure was thickset, but had not as yet acquired the squatness of
later days. If in the years to come he grew to resemble George Eliot's
portrait of Mr. Casson, when the inevitable penalty of sedentariness and
good living has to be paid in increasing corpulence, he never lost his
tripping gait which in early manhood earned for him the _sobriquet_ of
'Denty Allan.' In deportment and dress he was 'easy, trig and neat,'
leaning a little to vanity's side in his manners, yet nathless as
honourable, sound-hearted, clean-souled a gentleman as any that lounged
around Edinburgh Cross of a sunny Saturday afternoon. Such was the youth
that presented himself to bonny Kirsty Ross at her father's tea-table.

The acquaintance soon expanded into friendship. Before long, as has been
stated, the household observed, not without amusement, that whenever
Saturday came round, on which day James Ross' wig was sent down to
receive its week's dressing from young Ramsay, Kirsty found she needed a
walk, which always seemed to take her past the sign of 'the flying
Mercury,' so that she could hand in the wig and call for it as she
returned. Ah, artful Miss Kirsty! As the idyll progressed, the interim
walk was abandoned, and the fair one found it pleasanter, as she said,
to pass the time in conversation with the young _coiffeur_ as he combed
the paternal wig. The intercourse thus commenced on both sides, more as
a frolic than aught else, speedily led to warmer feelings than those of
friendship being entertained, and in the spring of 1711 Allan Ramsay
asked the daughter of the lawyer to share life's lot with him.

The lovers were, of course, too well aware of the dissimilarity in their
social stations to hope for any ready acquiescence in their matrimonial
projects by the ambitious Edinburgh lawyer. To win consent, the matter
had to be prudently gone about. The position Ramsay's family had held
in the past reckoned for something, it is true, in the problem, but the
real point at issue was, What was the