“A clever thought,” said the Englisher. “Do you think they would fit me?—Devilish clever thought, indeed.”
“To a hair,” I answered; and cried to Nanse to bring the velveteens.
I do not think he was ten minutes, when lo, and behold! out at the door he went, and away past the shop-window like a lamplighter. The buttons on the velveteens were glittering like gold at the knees. Alas! it was like the flash of the setting sun; I never beheld them more. He was to have been back in two or three hours, but the laddie, with the box on his shoulder, was going through the street crying “Hot penny-pies” for supper, and neither word nor wittens of him. I began to be a thought uneasy, and fidgeted on the board like a hen on a hot girdle. No man should do any thing when he is vexed, but I could not help giving Tammy Bodkin, who was sewing away at the lining of the new pantaloons, a terrible whisk in the lug for singing to himself. I say I was vexed for it afterwards; especially as the laddie did not mean to give offence; and as I saw the blae marks of my four fingers along his chaft-blade.
The wife had been bothering me for a new gown, on strength of the payment of our grand bill; and in came she, at this blessed moment of time, with about twenty swatches from Simeon Calicoe’s prinned on a screed of paper.
“Which of these do you think bonniest?” said Nanse, in a flattering way; “I ken, Mansie, you have a good taste.”
“Cut not before the cloth,” answered I, “gudewife,” with a wise shake of my head. “It’ll be time enough, I daresay, to make your choice to-morrow.”
Nanse went out as if her nose had been blooding. I could thole it no longer; so, buttoning my breeches-knees, I threw my cowl into a corner, clapped my hat on my head, and away down in full birr to the Duke’s gate.
I speired at the porter, if the gentleman with the velveteen breeches and powdered hair, that was dining with the Duke, had come up the avenue yet?
“Velveteen breeches and powdered hair!” said auld Paul
laughing, and taking the pipe out of his cheek, “whose butler is’t that ye’re after?”