She was led to think of embarking in this course of study, by the necessity she was often under of making, as she said, her servants ‘walk the carpet’; or, in other words, submit to receive those kind of benedictions to which servants are, in the opinion of all good administrators of householdry, so often and so justly entitled. It had occurred to her that, some time or another, occasion might require that she should carry a delinquent handmaid before the Magistrates, or even before the Lords; indeed, she was determined to do so on the very first occurrence of transgression, and, therefore, she was naturally anxious to obtain a little insight of the best practice in the Parliament House, that she might, as she said herself, be made capable of implementing her man of business how to proceed.
Walkinshaw, by promising to take every legal step that she herself could take against Pitwinnoch, had evinced, as she considered it, such a commendable respect for her judgement, that he endeared himself to her more than ever. He was, in consequence, employed to conduct her to the Parliament House, that she might hear the pleadings; but by some mistake he took her to that sink of sin the Theatre, when Othello was performing, where, as she declared, she had received all the knowledge of the criminal law she could require, it having been manifestly shown that any woman stealing a napkin ought to be prosecuted with the utmost rigour. But her legal studies were soon interrupted by the wedding festivities; and when she returned to Glasgow, alas! she was not long permitted to indulge her legal pursuits; for various causes combined to deprive the world of our incomparable heroine. Her doleful exit from the tents of Time, Law, and Physic, it is now our melancholy duty to relate, which we shall endeavour to do with all that good-humoured pathos for which we are so greatly and so deservedly celebrated. If nobody says we are so distinguished, we must modestly do it ourselves, never having been able to understand why a candidate for parliament or popularity should be allowed to boast of his virtues more than any other dealer in tales and fictions.
CHAPTER C
Marriage feasts, we are creditably informed, as the Leddy would have said, are of greater antiquity than funerals; and those with which the weddings of Walkinshaw and his sister were celebrated, lacked nothing of the customary festivities. The dinners which took place in Edinburgh were, of course, served with all the refinements of taste and dissertations on character, which render the entertainments in the metropolis of Mind occasionally so racy and peculiar. But the cut-and-come-again banquets of Glasgow, as the Leddy called them, following on the return of the Laird and his bride to his patrimonial seat, were, in her opinion, far superior, and she enjoyed them with equal glee and zest.
‘Thanks be, and praise,’ said she, after returning home from one of those costly piles of food, ‘I hae lived to see, at last, something like wedding doings in my family. Charlie’s and Bell Fatherlans’s was a cauldrife commodity, boding scant and want, and so cam o’t—Watty’s was a walloping galravitch o’ idiocety, and so cam o’t—Geordie’s was little better than a burial formality trying to gie a smirk, and so cam o’t—as for Meg’s and Dirdumwhamle’s, theirs was a third marriage—a cauld-kail-het-again affair—and Beenie and Walky’s Gretna Green, play-actoring,—Bed, Board, and Washing, bore witness and testimony to whatna kind o’ bridal they had. But thir jocose gavaulings are worthy o’ the occasion. Let naebody tell me, noo, that the three P’s o’ Glasgow mean Packages, Puncheons, and Pigtail, for I have seen and known that they may be read in a marginal note Pomp, Punch, and Plenty. To be sure, the Embroshers are no without a genteelity—that maun be condescended to them. But I jealouse they’re pinched to get gude wine, poor folk—they try sae mony different bottles: naething hae they like a gausie bowl. Therefore, commend me to our ain countryside,—Fatted calves, and feasting Belshazzers,—and let the Embroshers cerimoneez wi’ their Pharaoh’s lean kine and Grants and Frazers.’
But often when the heart exults, when the ‘bosom’s lord sits light upon his throne,’ it is an omen of sorrow. On the very night after this happy revel of the spirits, the Leddy caught a fatal cold, in consequence of standing in the current of a door while the provost’s wife, putting on her pattens, stopped the way, and she was next morning so indisposed that it was found necessary to call in Dr. Sinney to attend her; who was of opinion, considering she was upwards of seventy-six, that it might go hard with her if she did not recover; and, this being communicated to her friends, they began to prepare themselves for the worst.
Her daughter, the Lady of Dirdumwhamle, came in from the country, and paid her every mark of attention. At the suggestion of her husband, she, once or twice, intimated a little anxiety to know if her mother had made a will; but the Leddy cut her short, by saying,—
‘What’s t’at to thee, Meg? I’m sure I’m no dead yet, that t’ou should be groping about my bit gathering.’
Dirdumwhamle himself rode daily into Glasgow in the most dutiful manner; but, receiving no satisfaction from the accounts of his wife respecting the Leddy’s affairs, he was, of course, deeply concerned at her situation; and, on one occasion, when he was sitting in the most sympathising manner at her bedside, he said, with an affectionate and tender voice,—