‘Vio. I’ll give you fair-play in an honest way.
‘Will. Then, madam, I can command a parson when I please; and if you be half so kind as I could wish, we’ll take a hackney, and trot up to some honest curate’s house: besides, a guinea or so will be a charity to him perhaps.
‘Vio. Hold a little; I am hardly ready for that yet,’ &c.
After the departure of this hopeful couple, Lord Huffy and Lord Whigriddin, who are understood to have been intended for Lord Leven (son of the Earl of Melville) and the Earl of Crawford, enter the gardens, and hold some discourse of a different kind.
[THE SPEAKING HOUSE.]
The mansion on which I venture to confer this title is an old one of imposing appearance, a little below Moray House. It is conspicuous by three gables presented to the street, and by the unusual space of linear ground which it occupies. Originally, it has had no door to the street. A porte-cochère gives admittance to a close behind, from which every part of the house had been admissible, and when this gateway was closed the inhabitants would be in a tolerably defensible position. In this feature the house gives a striking idea of the insecurity which marked the domestic life of three hundred years ago.