"Here's a chair for ye, Saunders," cried Betty. "Ye'll no be caring for tea, after the gill ye had wi' yer auld foreman, at the sign o' the 'Harrow,' yonder. Had ye ony mair after I left ye? I'm no sure about yer e'e. There's mair glamour in't than there should be. Sit ye down, and I'll bring the bundle with the ham and the waistcoat."
Grizelda held up her hands in amazement.
"For the love o' heaven, leave us, good leddies," she said to her friends.
"Oh ay," added the laird, "leave us, leave us, for mercy's sake."
"You have got into a duckpool," whispered the lady of Hallmyres, as she rose, followed by the others; "and I wish you fair out of it. Good by—good by."
BON GUALTIER'S TALES.
COUNTRY QUARTERS.
A pleasanter little town than Potterwell does not exist in that part of her Majesty's dominions called Scotland. On one side, the hand of cultivation has covered a genial soil with richness and fertility. The stately mansion, "bosomed high in tufted trees," occasionally invites the eye, as it wanders over the landscape; while here and there, the river Wimpledown may be seen peeping out amid the luxuriant verdure of wood and plain, and seeming to concentrate on itself all the radiance of any little sunshine that may be going. On the other side, again, are nothing but impracticable mountains—fine bluff old fellows—that evidently have an extensive and invincible contempt for Time, and, like other great ones of the earth, never carry any change about them. Look beyond these, and the prospect is indeed a fine one—a little monotonous, perhaps, but still a fine one—peak receding behind peak in endless series, a multitudinous sea of mountain tops, with noses as blue as a disappointed man's face, or Miss Harriet Martineau's stockings.