“Me'fiez vous, Monsieur Ipsden!” should some mentor have said.
As the Devil puts into a beginner's hands ace, queen, five trumps, to give him a taste for whist, so these lower classes have perhaps put forward one of their best cards to lead you into a false estimate of the strength of their hand.
Instead, however, of this, who should return, to disturb the equilibrium of truth, but this Christina Johnstone? She came thoughtfully in, and said:
“I've been taking a thoucht, and this is no what yon gude physeecian meaned; ye are no to fling your chaerity like a bane till a doeg; ye'll gang yoursel to Jess Rutherford; Flucker Johnstone, that's my brother, will convoy ye.”
“But how is your brother to know me?”
“How? Because I'll gie him a sair sair hiding, if he lets ye gang by.”
Then she returned the one-pound note, a fresh settlement was effected, and she left him. At the door she said: “And I am muckle obleeged to ye for your story and your goodness.”
While uttering these words, she half kissed her hand to him, with a lofty and disengaged gesture, such as one might expect from a queen, if queens did not wear stays; and was gone.
When his lordship, a few minutes after, sauntered out for a stroll, the first object he beheld was an exact human square, a handsome boy, with a body swelled out apparently to the size of a man's, with blue flannel, and blue cloth above it, leaning against a wall, with his hands in his pockets—a statuette of insouciance.
This marine puff-ball was Flucker Johnstone, aged fourteen.