"Haud your tongue! I dinna want to get rid o' Janet!" said Cleaver's boy, loyally, but without indignation. Such things had been, and might be again.
"It's aboot Janet onyway," said wise Cleg, shaking his head; "hae Sal or Susy been botherin' her?"
"Na," said Janet's lover, "they ken better. My certes, Janet wad gie them the door in their faces and then send for a polissman."
"Ye had better tell me, at ony rate," said Cleg.
And with a little pressing, James Annan did unburden his sore heart.
"Ye see," he said, "Janet's bonny—or I think sae——"
"It is the same thing exactly!" interjected Cleg.
"She's bonny, an' easy to be doin' wi'. She's no sair ava' in the way o' expense. She is a natural saver hersel', an' she's aye at me to be puttin' by the siller. O, in some ways it is juist like heeven—nae leemonades, nae swing rides, nae merry-go-rounds, nae shows! I declare she cares no a buckie for Pepper's Ghost. In that respect there's no a mair agreeabler lass in the toon. Janet is aye pleased to tak' a walk on the Calton, or maybe in the Gardens, or to the Museum, or doon the shore to Leith to see the ships, or, what pleases her best, juist doon to the Waverley Station to see the Heelant train come in. O, Cleg, she is sic a weel-dooin', couthy, kindly lass, that ony man micht hae been prood o' her."
"What is't, then," said Cleg, "since she's sae perfect? Is't the poetry?" To Cleg "the poetry" was a trouble which might seize a victim at any moment, like the toothache. "And then where are ye?" he would add, cogently.
But it was not the poetry. It was a deeper grief. It appeared from the tale which Cleg laboriously extracted from the reluctant and deeply wounded suitor, that Janet, though a well-doing lass in every respect, had one grave fault.