‘Where do you think we are to get fifty pounds a year?’ exclaimed Milrookit. ‘Fifty pounds a year!’
‘Just in the same neuk, Walky, where ye found the Kittlestonheugh estate and the three and twenty thousand pounds o’ lying siller, Beenie’s braw tocher,’ replied the Leddy; ‘and I think ye’re a very crunkly character, though your name’s no Habakkuk, to gi’e me sic a constipation o’ an answer.’
‘I can assure you, Leddy,’ said he, ‘if it was a thing within the compass of my power, I would na need to be told to be liberal to Mrs. Charles; but the burden o’ a family’s coming upon us, and it’s necessary, nay, it’s a duty, to consider that charity begins at hame.’
‘And what’s to become o’ her and her dochter? Gude guide us! would the hard nigger let her gang on the session? for I canna help her.’
‘All I can say at present,’ was his reply, ‘is that we are in no circumstances to spare any thing like fifty pounds a year.’
‘Then I can tell thee, Walky, I will this very day mak out my count, and every farthing I can extortionate frae thee, meeserable penure pig that thou art, shall be pay’t o’er to her to the last fraction, just to wring thy heart o’ niggerality.’
‘If you have any lawful claim against me, of course I am obliged to pay you.’
‘If I hae ony lawful claim?—ye Goliah o’ cheatrie—if I hae ony lawful claim?—But I’ll say nothing—I’ll mak out an account—and there’s nae law in Christendom to stop me for charging what I like—my goose shall lay gouden eggs, if the life bide in my bodie.—Ye unicorn of oppression, to speak to me o’ law, that was so kind to you—but law ye shall get, and law ye shall hae—and be made as lawful as it’s possible for caption and horning, wi’ clerk and signet to implement.’
‘If you will make your little favours a debt, nobody can prevent you; but I will pay no more than is justly due.’