"I hope sae, for just sic a purse brought the learned Doctor Fian to stake in 1590. I've read the ditty against him—he, he! but to come to the swine-trough, that would be an unco pity, you have such a braw taste for getting up dinners and suppers, that his grace the gourmand o' Lauderdale was just naething to ye."
"Say rather Juden Stenton, my ground baillie, major domo, squire of the body, and everything."
"Then your burnt sack is just perfection; but alake! you now begin to see the end o' chambering, dicing, drinking, racing, and wantonness. And puir Alison Gifford—faith, you made her tocher flee fast enough!'
"This admonitory tone becomes thee well!" said Clermistonlee, with scornful emphasis; "and truly, thou art like one of Job's comforters."
"He, he!" chuckled the senator, who had a strange fancy for maliciously stinging his companion. "This is the end o' spending puir Alison's money among horse-coupers, vintners, panders, de'ils-buckies, and bona-robas——"
"Hold, Mersington! I beg you will hear me with gravity. My good cousin and gossip, at times I have found your advice of the first value. You know how immensely fond I am of Lilian Napier, and having been pretty fortunate with the sex in my time (crush me! like What-is-his-name, I might say, Veni, vidi, vici,) I made the little minx an offer of marriage, and, would'st believe it? she really had the impudence to reject me."
"A braw buckie like you, Randal? For what?"
"Forsooth, only because I was a matter of some twenty years older than herself."
"Pest upon the gypsy! but then there is that plaguy entail—"
"Pshaw! I could soon have that broken. Lady Grisel hath the life-rent, and after her death (which cannot be far off), and failing the captain, the Lands go entire to Lilian. Now her cousin, this gay spark in the service of their Mightinesses, the States-General, by his leaguing and intriguing with that Dutch intromitter, Orange William and our rascally recusants, hath made the entail null—a dead letter—ha!"