Take it for all in all, it was huge fun: even Fanny had some lively sport at the beginning; Belle and I all through. We got Fanny a dress on the sly, gaudy black velvet and Duchesse lace. And alas! she was only able to wear it once. But we’ll hope to see more of it at Samoa; it really is lovely. Both dames are royally outfitted in silk stockings, etc. We return, as from a raid, with our spoils and our wounded. I am now very dandy: I announced two years ago that I should change. Slovenly youth, all right—not slovenly age. So really now I am pretty spruce; always a white shirt, white necktie, fresh shave, silk, socks, O a great sight!—No more possible,
R. L. S.
CHAPTER XXVIII
April, 1893.
1. Slip 3. Davie would be attracted into a similar dialect, as he is later—e.g., with Doig, chapter XIX. This is truly Scottish.
4, to lightly; correct; ‘to lightly’ is a good regular Scots verb.
15. See Allan Ramsay’s works.
15, 16. Ay, and that is one of the pigments with which I am trying to draw the character of Prestongrange. ’Tis a most curious thing to render that kind, insignificant mask. To make anything precise is to risk my effect. And till the day he died, Davie was never sure of what P. was after. Not only so; very often P. didn’t know himself. There was an element of mere liking for Davie; there was an element of being determined, in case of accidents, to keep well with him. He hoped his Barbara would bring him to her feet, besides, and make him manageable. That was why he sent him to Hope Park with them. But Davie cannot know; I give you the inside of Davie, and my method condemns me to give only the outside both of Prestongrange and his policy.
—I’ll give my mind to the technicalities. Yet to me they seem a part of the story, which is historical, after all.
—I think they wanted Alan to escape. But when or where to say so? I will try.