"And even if our honour was a wee thing damaged," rejoined the sister, "that might be made up by our lands being changed frae bog to arable, though, I believe, the bog, after a', is the auldest soil o' the country. Even the sad fate o' Nichol Muschet didna a'thegither destroy the respectability o' the Bogha's. There's great ancientness in bogs, yet as there's a kind o' fashion now-a-days about arable, I wadna be against the change to a certain limited extent. Ye hae now my opinion on this important subject, Gilbert, and may act according to the dictates o' the high spirit o' our auld race."
The door opened, and Rory Flayem entered.
"Weel, hae ye made the inquiry?" said the laird. "Has Mrs. Shirley really got a legacy o' the five thousand?"
"I have seen the cotton-spinner's will!" replied the writer, "and there can be nae doubt of the legacy."
Why more?—Next day the spruce laird was rapping at the door of the widow heiress. He entered with the cool dignity of his caste; and might have come out under the influence of the same cool prudence, had not his honourable blood been fired by the presence of one of those worthies already hinted at—a Linton laird—who could have been about nothing else in the world than trying to get a lift from off the poor's box, by the assistance of the Widow Shirley.
"Your servant, sir," said the Linton portioner; "I did not think you had been acquainted here. Ane might rather hae expected to hae seen you about Bogend or Glennmuck, where there are still some braw leddies to dispose of."
The remark was impertinent, doubtless, and horribly ill-timed, because Cauldshouthers had been rejected by Bogend, and he was here a suitor competing with one who desecrated the term he gloried in, and whom, along with the whole class of Linton lairds, he hated mortally and he had a good right to hate them, for some of them with no more than ten pounds a-year, were still heritors, and not only heritors, but ancient heritors, not much less ancient than the Geddeses themselves, so that they were a species of mock aristocrats, coming yet so near the real ones in the very attributes which the latter arrogated to themselves, that it required an effort of the mind to distinguish the real from the false. But Mr. Gilbert admitted of no such dubiety, and marked the difference decidedly and effectually. He did not return the Linton aristocrat an answer, but, drawing himself up, turned to the window as if to survey his competitor's estate, which consisted of a rood or two of arable land, and to wait till the latter took his hat. The Linton aristocrat very soon left the room; and however unimportant this slight event may appear, it was in fact decisive of the higher aristocrat's fate, for the blood of the Geddeses was up, and the heat of tory blood is a condition of the precious fluid not to be laughed at.
"Ye'll hae nae want o' thae sma' heritor creatures after ye, dame," said he, as he condescended to sit down by the blushing widow.
"Yes," answered she, with great simplicity. "Fortune, Mr. Geddes, brings friends, or, at least, would-be friends, and one who has few relations requires to be on her guard."
"It is everything in thae matters," said the proprietor, "to look to respectability and station. Thae Linton bodies ca' themselves lairds, because they are proprietors o' about as muckle ground as would mak guid roomy graves to them. A real laird is something very different. And it's a pity when it becomes necessary that we should shew them the difference."