"And it's my opeenion the puir laddie will just die, if nobody sees to him; and I've taken the liberty of writing to Major Cawmill mysel', to beg him to come up and see to him, for it's a pity to see his lordship cast away, for want of an understanding body to advise him."
"So I am not an understanding body, Bowie?"
"Oh, madam, ye're young and bonny," says Bowie, in a tone in which admiration is not unmingled with pity.
"Young indeed! Mr. Bowie, do you know that I am almost as old as you?"
"Hoot, hut, hut—" says Bowie, looking at the wax-like complexion and bright hawk-eyes.
"Really I am. I'm past five-and-thirty this many a day."
"Weel, then, madam, if you'll excuse me, ye're old enough to be wiser than to let his lordship be inveigled with any such play-acting."
"Really he's not inveigled," says Sabina, laughing. "It is all his own fault, and I have warned him how absurd and impossible it is. She has refused even to see him; and you know yourself he has not been near our house for these three weeks."
"Ah, madam, you'll excuse me: but that's the way with that sort of people, just to draw back and draw back, to make a poor young gentleman follow them all the keener, as a trout does a minnow, the faster you spin it."
"I assure you no. I can't let you into ladies' secrets; but there is no more chance of her listening to him than of me. And as for me, I have been trying all the spring to marry him to a young lady with eighty thousand pounds; so you can't complain of me."