"Exactly, and then to get a relay of post-horses at Ramsay's stables. But as for staying in Edinburgh, egad! it would be intolerable to me, with its would-be dandies and its freckled women, whose faces have that sweet expression imparted by the soothing influences of Presbyterianism and the east wind; and then its one street, or only half a street to promenade in, who the devil would stay there that could stay out of it? Why, not even the rhyming ganger who hailed it as 'Edina, Scotia's darling seat.'"
As his son concluded with a loud laugh, Lord Rohallion shook his powdered head, for he could not endorse this unpatriotic depreciation of the Scottish metropolis, and poor Lady Winifred sighed as she glanced at a black silhouette by Miers, presented to her by the bard of Coila, with a copy of his verses in her honour; and then remembering the fancied glories of the Old Assembly Close, as she and her friend, Lady Eglinton, had seen them in their girlhood, she said:
"In my time, Cosmo, Edinburgh was wont to be gay enough."
"A sad gaiety. Thank God, mother, the Guards can never be quartered in so dull a provincial town."
"Its dulness is the effect of the Union, which removed court, council, parliament, revenue, and everything," said Lord Rohallion.
"I thought most people had ceased to consider that a grievance," said his son, laughing again; "but I think that if Edinburgh has been dull since 1707, it must have been truly diabolical before it."
"Cosmo," said his mother, reproachfully, "I know not what some of your ancestors who fought at Flodden and Pinkey would have thought of you."
"The more fools they to fight at such places."
"Not so," said the old lord rising, with some asperity in his tone; "God rest all who ever fought or died for Scotland and her kings; and I must tell you, Cosmo, that you will never be the better or the truer Briton for being a bad or false Scotsman!"
The Master gave another of his sinister laughs; and, finding that the conversation had suddenly taken an uncomfortable turn, his father said with a smile—