"I whiles wonder at you, Mr. Burns, and the way you go about admiring every tinker-peddler who tosses a rhyme together. Ye've no sense of your own value at times. Do you know," she went on, fair glorious to see in her enthusiasm glowering down at him—"Do you know that when this man Shenstone's grave is as flat to the earth as my hand, and his name forgot, people will be building monuments to you and raising schools for your memory. Why," she cried, in an ecstasy, "'tis you that have made our old mother Scotland able to hold up her head and look the whole world in the face when the word 'Poetry' is called."
"Ye think so?" he asked, the tears big in his eyes, his gloom put behind him. "It's music to hear ye praise me so," and he rose and leaned against the mantel-shelf, his face irradiated by its usual expression.
"Perhaps," he began with some hope, "when I say farewell to rakery once and for all, I may make something fine yet. Most men, Mistress Stair, shake hands with that irresponsible wench called Pleasure, but I have dallied too long, I fear, in her intoxicating society. Aye!" he finished, "Wisdom's late upon the road!"[5 ]
"Let's make a poem of it! It sounds like one!" she cried, moving toward the spinet.
"Take your own gate," says Burns, laughing; "I'll follow!"
"I'll take the first lines," she said gayly. "'Twill throw the brunt of the rhyming on you."
"You're o'er thoughtful," Burns laughed back at her, and Nancy began rhyming to an old tune the thought they had passed between them, with Burns ready with his rhymes before her lines were entirely spoken:
Nancy
"At break o' day, one morn o' May,
While dew lay silverin' all the lea";