As soon as I have recovered a missing link of my fishing-rod (which it seems has been overlooked by Mister Pawnbroker), and when I have procured some suitable bait, &c., it is my intention to catch a fine salmon out of the burn for my enchanting divinity, and, as I place the fish in her lily-like hands, to strike iron while it is hot and make her the formal proposal of matrimony.
Mister Crum, hearing of my piscatorial ambitions, has, with almost incredible simplicity, offered to lend me his salmon rod, with a volume of flies, little suspecting that he will be assisting me to catch two fish upon one hook! I am immensely tickled by such a tip-top joke, and can scarcely refrain from imparting it to Miss Wee-Wee herself, though I shall wait until I have first secured the salmon.
I had some valuable remarks upon Scottish idioms and linguistic peculiarities, &c., but these, of course, are to be suppressed sine die—unless I am to be permitted to overflow into a special supplement.
XXVI
Mr Jabberjee expresses some audaciously sceptical opinions. How he secured his first Salmon, with the manner in which he presented it to his divinity.
Owing mainly to lack of opportunity, invitations, et cætera, I have not resumed the offensive against members of the grouse department, but have rather occupied myself in laborious study of Caledonian dialects, as exemplified in sundry local works of poetical and prose fiction, until I should be competent to converse with the aborigines in their own tongue.