The Scotch know how to keep their word. At six o'clock precisely the maid returned, but wanted to know whether she might have the evening free as well.
"What do you want the evening for?" asked her mistress.
"Oh! ma'am," replied the lassie, "the rest of the family want to finish the day at the theatre, and they asked me to go with them."
Impossible to refuse so natural a request.
This trait of the Scotch character is often to be met with in the superior classes also.
Here is a very striking example of it.
One of my friends, an eminent professor at one of the great English public schools, had taken to Braemar with him a young Scotchman of great promise whom he wished not to lose sight of during the long summer vacation.
The mornings and evenings were devoted to study. The hot afternoons were spent with Horace and Euripides, on the bank of the Dee, in the shade of the trees that crowd down to the water's brink, as if they were all eager to gaze at their own reflection in the river.
During the dry season the stream is fordable in several places, and many times had the young Scotchman crossed it.