Once he had looked into Parliament House itself, and managed to walk twice round before "getting chucked," as he remarked. So he knew all about it.
He took an oily piece of cotton waste with which Poet Jock cleaned his lamps. He secured it about his head, so that it hung down his back for a wig. He put a penny in his eye, instead of the orthodox legal eyeglass. Then he set his hands in the small of his back, and began to parade up and down the centre of the old railway carriage in a very dignified manner, with the old sack waving behind him after the fashion of a gown.
He pretended to look down with a lofty contempt upon Poet Jock and Auld Chairlie, as they watched him open-mouthed.
"Who the devil are those fellows?" he said; "lot of asses about. Everybody is an ass. Who's sitting to-day? Ha! old Bully-boy—bally ass he is! Who's speaking? Young Covercase—another bleating ass! Say, old chappie, come and let's have a drink, and get out of the way of the asses."
It is to be feared that Cleg would next have gone on to imitate the clergy of his native city. But he was hampered by the fact that his opportunities for observation had been limited to the street. He had never been within a church door in his life. And that not so much because he would have stood a good chance of being turned out as a mischief-maker, but from natural aversion to an hour's confinement.
Then Cleg wrapped his old sack about him very tightly, and assumed a fixed smile of great suavity. He approached the poet, who was stretching his long limbs in the upper bunk which occupied one side of the hut.
"Ah," said Cleg, slowly wagging his head from side to side, "and how do we find ourselves to-day? Better? Let me feel your pulse—Ah, just as I expected. Tongue—furry? Have you taken the medicine? What you need is strengthening food, and the treatment as before. See that you get it—blue mange, grouse pie, and the best champagne! And continue the treatment! Good-morning!"
Cleg wrapped his sack closer about him as he finished, to represent the slim surtout of the healing faculty, and, setting an old tea "cannie" of tin upon his head to represent a tall hat, he bowed himself out with his best Canongate imitation of a suitable and effective bedside manner.
There was no end to Cleg's entertainment when he felt that he had an appreciative audience. And as the comedy consisted not so much in what he said as in the perfect solemnity of his countenance, the charm of his bare arms meandering through the holes in the corners of the sack, and the bare legs stalking compass-like through its open mouth, Poet Jock laughed till he had to lie down on the floor in the corner. Even Auld Chairlie was compelled perforce to smile, though he often declared his belief that it was all vanity, and that Cleg was certainly a child of the devil.
Chairlie was specially confirmed in this opinion by Cleg's next characterisation.