‘I do not listen to gossip,’ said Merton. ‘I presume, though you have not addressed me by letter, that your visit is not unconnected with business?’
‘No, no, no letters! I never was wasteful in postage stamps. But as I was in London, to see the doctor, for the Edinburgh ones can make nothing of the case—a kind of dwawming—I looked in at auld Nicky Maxwell’s. She gave me a good character of you, and she is one to lippen to. And you make no charge for a first interview.’
Merton vaguely conjectured that to ‘lippen’ implied some sort of caress; however, he only said that he was obliged to Miss Maxwell for her kind estimate of his firm.
‘Gray and Graham, good Scots names. You’ll not be one of the Grahams of Netherby, though?’
‘The name of the firm is merely conventional, a trading title,’ said Merton; ‘if you want to know my
name, there it is,’ and he handed his card to the marquis, who stared at it, and (apparently from motiveless acquisitiveness) put it into his pocket.
‘I don’t like an alias,’ he said. ‘But it seems you are to lippen to.’
From the context Merton now understood that the marquis probably wished to signify that he was to be trusted. So he bowed, and expressed a hope that he was ‘all that could be desired in the lippening way.’
‘You’re laughing at my Doric?’ asked the nobleman. ‘Well, in the only important way, it’s not at my expense. Ha! Ha!’ He shook a lumbering laugh out of himself.
Merton smiled—and was bored.