“Ye’ll think I’m droll,” said he, “but it just cam’ in my heid to buy a valenteen. To-morrow’s Jinnet’s birthday, and it wad be a rale divert to send her ladyship yin and tak’ a kind o; rise oot o’ her. Come and gie’s a hand to pick a nice yin.”
I went into the oil-and-colour shop, but, alas! for the ancient lover, he found there that the day of sentiment was done so far as the 14th of February was concerned. .
“Hae ye ony nice valenteens?” he asked a boy behind the counter.
“Is’t a comic ye mean?” asked the boy, apparently not much amazed at so strange an application from an elderly gentleman.
“A comic!” said my friend in disdain. “Dae I look like the kind o’ chap that sends mock valenteens? If ye gie me ony o’ your chat I’ll tell yer mither, ye wee—ye wee rascal! Ye’ll be asking me next if I want a mooth harmonium. Dae ye think I’m angry wi’ the cook in some hoose roond in-the terraces because she’s-chief wi’ the letter-carrier? I’ll comic ye!”
“Weel, it’s only comics we hae,” said the youthful shopkeeper; “the only ither kind we hae’s Christmas cairds, and I think we’re oot o’ them.”
He was a business-like boy,—he flung a pile of the mock valentines on the counter before us.
Erchie turned them over with contemptuous fingers. “It’s a gey droll age we live in,” said he to me. “We’re far ower funny, though ye wadna think it to see us. I have a great respect for valenteens, for if it wasna for a valenteen there maybe wadna hae been ony Jinnet—at least in my hoose. I wad gie a shillin’ for a rale auld-fashioned valenteen that gaed oot and in like a concertina, wi’ lace roond aboot it, and a smell o’ scent aff it, and twa silver herts on’t skewered through the middle the same as it was for brandering. Ye havena seen mony o’ that kind, laddie? Na, I daursay no’; they were oot afore your time, though I thocht ye micht hae some in the back-shop. They were the go when we werena nearly sae smert as we are nooadays. I’m gled I havena to start the coortin’ again.”
He came on one of the garish sheets that was less vulgar than the others, with the picture of a young lady under an umbrella, and a verse of not unkindly doggerel.
“That’ll hae to dae,” said he, “although it’s onything but fancy.”