“Why, Johnson, I tell you. Johnson’s here! Don’t you know what I mean? Johnson, the don,” and Eddy laughed again till the tears ran down his cheeks. “I’ll bring him to see you, old fellow. You shall have your fight out, and I’ll back you, old boy, to him, six to one.”
“My learned correspondent!” said Rankin, with a look of excitement. And then he turned to Rosamond. “Your brother is a wild laddie, but I suppose what he says is true?”
“I suppose so,” said Rosamond, with great gravity, while Eddy did his best to subdue the convulsions of laughter into which he had fallen. His sister was impatient of Eddy’s joke, and of the whole matter. “Let us, please, see the little dogs,” she said.
“Yes; but I’m far more interested about the other thing,” said Rankin, “for I would like well to put forth my views in a mair extended form. The space of the paper is real limited. They will sometimes leave out just your maist conclusive argument. Dod! but I’d like a crack with Mr. Johnson fine.”
“I wish you would not laugh like a fool,” said Rosamond, frowning. “What is there to laugh about? Mr. Johnson is not nearly so nice-looking as Mr. Rankin, and I think he’ll be disappointed in him. But you need not go on making a ridiculous noise in this way. I wish to have one of the little dogs to give to a lady I know. She will be very kind to it. She is my grandmamma. She likes her dogs better than anything else in the world.”
“The dogues are fine creatures,” said Rankin; “but no to be made a first objeck. I dinna agree with that. A leddy that likes her dogs better than anything else will just probably spile them, baith their health and their moral nature. Ye will observe, mem, that I am not wanting to sell my dogues. I have aye plenty of customers for them: the first houses in the land has my dogues. It’s no as if I was keen to sell. She will no doubt feed them in a ridiculous way—sweet biscuits and made dishes, instead of good porridge and a bone at a time. Na, I think I’ll no give you one for your grandmammaw, though I dinna like to disappoint a bonnie young leddy. If it was for yoursel’ now—”
“I would like to have this one for myself,” said Rosamond, as the little half-blind puppy curled on her lap and nibbled at her fingers. “It will be like little Roy at Rosmore.”
“That will it!” said old Rankin in the fervour of generous acquiescence, “or may be even finer. And ye shall have it, ye shall have it! I will give ye my directions, and ye’ll make a principle of carrying them out. If ye do that, ye’ll keep the little beastie in good health, and aye clean and pleasant—and he’ll be a pleasure to ye a’ his days. There are no finer bred dogues in a’ Scotland, though I say it that maybe shouldn’t. And if ye’ll be guided by me, ye’ll just call him Roy too. It is a fine handy little name. I call them all the same, like Dandy Dinmont’s terriers in Sir Walter, as maybe ye will remember. It’s a kind of token of the race: and ye may make real pleasant acquaintances about the world, or maybe, wha kens, be directed to a braw gentleman that will make ye a fine partner for life—just by the circumstance of having twa doggies by the name of Roy, baith from Rosmore!”
Rankin ended with a faint guffaw partly at his own humour, partly in the emotion of giving up to a stranger one of his cherished infants. He dived again into the mysterious receptacle in which the puppies feebly squeeled and whined, within reach of his hand, and produced, all warm and blurred from that nest, another ball of fur. “Ye can tak’ your choice,” he said; “this ane is of the line of Roy as well as that ane. It is the last I have, and I dinna see my way to pleasure Lady Jean till maybe geyan weel on in the next year. If ye were to fancy the twa, I wadna grudge them to ye: for I think you know what you’re about with dogues. Would you like to have it? Oh, it’s not to please me but to please you. I can dispose of the double of what I have got, or am like to get. There’s not a person comes to Rosmore but is keen for one of Rankin’s dogues. But I’m that pleased with you and your sense, that, if ye like, I’ll let you have the twa.”
Rosamond accepted the favour in her stately way. “Have we any money, Eddy?” she said. It did not in the least trouble her when her brother for answer turned his pockets inside out “It does not matter in the least,” she said. “I should like to have them both, and the money will come somehow.” She was not touched with doubt as Archie had been about the possibilities of paying. She was aware that she was poor, and had not a penny; but most things she wanted were procured for her in one way or another. This had been Rosamond’s experience since ever she remembered, and naturally it gave her mind a great calm.