and fro, to the confusion of the dancers. Some mirthful
comments followed; and Jean heard the poet say to his partner--or, as I
should imagine, laughingly launch the remark to the company at
large--that "he wished he could get any of the lasses to like him as
well as his dog." Some time after, as the girl was bleaching clothes on
Mauchline green, Robert chanced to go by, still accompanied by his dog;
and the dog, "scouring in long excursion," scampered with four black
paws across the linen. This brought the two into conversation; when
Jean, with a somewhat hoydenish advance, inquired if "he had yet got any
of the lasses to like him as well as his dog?" It is one of the
misfortunes of the professional Don Juan that his honour forbids him to
refuse battle; he is in life like the Roman soldier upon duty, or like
the sworn physician who must attend on all diseases. Burns accepted the
provocation; hungry hope reawakened in his heart; here was a
girl--pretty, simple at least, if not honestly stupid, and plainly not
averse to his attentions: it seemed to him once more as if love might
here be waiting him. Had he but known the truth! for this facile and
empty-headed girl had nothing more in view than a flirtation; and her
heart, from the first and on to the end of her story, was engaged by
another man. Burns once more commenced the celebrated process of
"battering himself into a warm affection"; and the proofs of his success
are to be found in many verses of the period. Nor did he succeed with
himself only; Jean, with her heart still elsewhere, succumbed to his
fascination, and early in the next year the natural consequence became
manifest. It was a heavy stroke for this unfortunate couple. They had
trifled with life, and were now rudely reminded of life's serious
issues. Jean awoke to the ruin of her hopes; the best she had now to
expect was marriage with a man who was a stranger to her dearest
thoughts; she might now be glad if she could get what she would never
have chosen. As for Burns, at the stroke of the calamity he recognised
that his voyage of discovery had led him into a wrong hemisphere--that
he was not, and never had been, really in love with Jean. Hear him in
the pressure of the hour. "Against two things," he writes, "I am as
fixed as fate--staying at home, and owning her conjugally. The first,
by heaven, I will not do!--the last, by hell, I will never do!" And then
he adds, perhaps already in a more relenting temper