“Weel, there’s Mysie down there, milking the cow, and there’s her father, my sister’s son. Eh, to see the ill the warld and a family do to a man! for there’s that lad Geordie Paxton, no fifty year auld, and he’s a mair aged man than me—‘for such shall have sorrow in the flesh,’ the Apostle says, and never being married mysel, ye see, and keeping up nae troke wi’ far-off kin, that’s a’ the friends, except a cousin, here and there, that I hae.”
“And does naebody ever come to see you?” asked Katie.
“No a creature—wha should mind me, a silly auld man?” answered the Dragon, with a momentary pathos in his tone. “And I couldna be fashed wi’ strangers either, and you see I hae a’thing within mysel, milk and meal, board and bed, sae that I’m nae ways dependent on either fremd-folk or friends; but ye may speak for me if you like, Miss Rose, to Mr. Hairy for a book whiles. There’s grand, solid books yonder of the auld maister’s, and there’s ane or twa that I found out no lang syne that wadna do for the like of you—I wouldna consent to lead away the young wi’ them; but they do weel enough to divert an auld man that has experience of the world, and kens guid from evil; and I’ll promise faithful to burn every word o’ them when I’ve ta’en the divert mysel. Here’s ane, ye see. I wadna let you read it, and you a young lassie; but ye may look at its name.”
And looking, Rose discovered in the charred bundle of leaves which lay on the old man’s hob, and lighted his fire, a torn “Vicar of Wakefield.”
“Eh, I’ve read that!” said Violet, under her breath; and Violet looked on with horror as if at a human sacrifice.
“Every morning, when I take a page for my light, I read it first,” said the Dragon, chuckling; “there’s that muckle diversion in’t; but it’s no for you—it’s no for the like of you.”
CHAPTER IX.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be,
For borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
HAMLET.