“Only a dancing-master’s cards for his ball,” said the printer’s journeyman. “I’ll not work beyond my time for any dancing-master that wears a head.”
The messenger then said, that he was desired to ask for the manuscript card.
This card was hunted for all over the room; and, at last, Forester found it under a heap of refuse papers: his eye was caught with the name of his old friend, Monsieur Pasgrave, the dancing-master, whom he had formerly frightened by the skeleton with the fiery eyes.
“I will print the cards for him myself; I am not at all tired,” cried Forester, who was determined to make some little amends for the injury which he had formerly done to the poor dancing-master. He resolved to print the cards for nothing, and he stayed up very late to finish them. His companions all left him, for they were in a great hurry to see, what in Edinburgh is a rare sight, the town illuminated.
These illuminations were upon account of some great naval victory.
Forester, steady to Monsieur Pasgrave’s cards, did what no other workman would have done; he finished for him, on this night of public joy, his three hundred cards. Every now and then, as he was quietly at work, he heard the loud huzzas in the street: his waning candle sunk in the socket, as he had just packed up his work.
By the direction at the bottom of the cards, he learned where M. Pasgrave lodged, and, as he was going out to look at the illuminations, he resolved to leave them himself at the dancing-master’s house.
THE ILLUMINATIONS.
The illuminations were really beautiful. He went up to the Castle, whence he saw a great part of the Old Town, and all Prince’s-street, lighted up in the most splendid manner. He crossed the Earth-mound into Prince’s-street. Walking down Prince’s-street, he saw a crowd of people gathered before the large illuminated window of a confectioner’s shop. As he approached nearer, he distinctly heard the voice of Tom Random, who was haranguing the mob. The device and motto which the confectioner displayed in his window displeased this gentleman, who, beside his public-spirited abhorrence of all men of a party opposite to his own, had likewise private cause of dislike to this confectioner, who had refused him his daughter in marriage.
It was part of Random’s new system of political justice to revenge his own quarrels.