The smile went off Nanse’s cheek like lightning, she said it could not be true; but she would go to the kitchen to see. I’fegs it was too true; for she never came back to tell the contrary.
This was really and truly a terrible business, but the truth for all that; the cheese-toaster casting up not an hour after, in the hands of Daniel Search, to whom I gave a dram. The loss of the tin cheese-toaster would have been a trifle, especially as it was broken in the handle—but this was an awful blow to
the truth of the thieving dumbie’s grand prophecy. Nevertheless, it seemed at the time gey puzzling to me, to think how a deaf and dumb woman, unless she had some wonderful gift, could have told us what she did.
On the next day, the Friday, I think, that story was also made as clear as daylight to us; for being banished out of the town as a common thief and vagabond, down on the Musselburgh Road, by order of a justice of the peace, it was the bounden duty of Daniel Search and Geordie Sharp to see her safe past the kennel, the length of Smeaton. They then tried to make her understand by writing on the wall, that if ever again she was seen or heard tell of in the town, she would be banished to Botany Bay; but she had a great fight, it seems, to make out Daniel’s bad spelling, he having been very ill yedicated, and no deacon at the pen.
Howsoever, they got her to understand their meaning, by giving her a shove forward by the shoulders, and aye pointing down to Inveresk. Thinking she did not hear them, they then took upon themselves the liberty of calling her some ill names, and bade her good-day as a bad one. But she was upsides with them for acting, in that respect, above their commission; for she wheeled round again to them, and snapping her fingers at their noses, gave a curse, and bade them go home for a couple of dirty Scotch vermin.
The two men were perfectly dumfoundered at hearing the tongue-tied wife speaking as good English as themselves; and could not help stopping to look after her for a long way on the road, as every now and then she stuck one of her arms a-kimbo in her side, and gave a dance round in the whirling-jig way, louping like daft, and lilting like a grey-lintie. From her way of speaking, they also saw immediately that she too was an Eirisher.—They must be a bonny family when they are all at home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE—ANENT THE YOUNG CALLANT MUNGO GLEN
Perhaps, since I was born, I do not remember such a string of casualties as happened to me and mine, all within the period of one short fortnight. To say nothing connected with the play-acting business, which was immediately before—first came Mungo Glen’s misfortune with regard to the blood-soiling of the new nankeen trowsers, the foremost of his transactions, and a bad omen—next, the fire, and all its wonderfuls, the saving of the old bedridden woman’s precious life, and the destruction of the poor cat—syne the robbery of the hen-house by the Eirish ne’er-do-weels, who paid so sweetly for their pranks—and lastly, the hoax, the thieving of the cheese-toaster without the handle, and the banishment of the spaewife.
These were awful signs of the times, and seemed to say that the world was fast coming to a finis; the ends of the earth appearing to have combined in a great Popish plot of villany. Every man that had a heart to feel, must have trembled amid these threatening, judgment-like, and calamitous events. As for my own part, the depravity of the nations, which most of these scenes showed me, I must say, fell heavily upon my spirit; and I could not help thinking of the old cities of the plain, over the house-tops of which, for their heinous sins and iniquitous abominations, the wrath of the Almighty showered down fire and
brimstone from heaven till the very earth melted and swallowed them up for ever and ever.