"A woman," he said, "I could not apply to a woman. There is always something odious about a woman's letter. I actually do not recover from the shock of handling the writing of one of them for days. Do you not know any one else?"
"There's Maister Donald Iverach," said Cleg. "He wad gie me a character if I got Miss Celie to ask him," answered Cleg.
"My nephew in Edinburgh, that young three-legged stool! You'll do nothing of the kind," cried the General. "I would not give a brass button for his own character. And besides, from the tone in which you speak, I have little doubt that the two persons you mention are contemplating matrimony. I do not wish any communication with anything so disgusting—much less when one of the parties is an ungrateful and grasping relative of my own."
By this time Cleg had had enough of the General's catechism.
"I'll be requiring a reference mysel'," he said, in the tone which he had heard Mistress Roy of the paper-shop adopt, when a new customer asked for a week's credit.
"A what?" said the General, astonished.
"A reference as to your moral character, if I am to serve in your house!" replied Cleg, unabashed.
The General clapped his hands with unfeigned pleasure.
"Bless you, my boy, you please me!" he said, chuckling; "do you know that it is more than fifty years since General Theophilus Ruff had such a thing?"