"Ye can easily get yer tea, sir," said the woman of forty-two, looking pleased at being addressed, "my dear;" "but, as for the bed, unless ye like to sleep in a dooble-bedded room, we canna gie ye accomodation. The lad that sleeps in ane o' the beds, is a decent sort o' a callant. We dinna ken much aboot him though; for he only comes here at nicht for his bed; and in the mornings, after his breakfast, awa' he gangs, and we never sees his face till nicht again; except upon the Sundays, when he aye has a pairty o' braw leddies an' gentlemen to dinner wi' him. He has leeved that way for a fortnicht or three weeks; an' my mistress hasna been the woman to ask him for a penny. Fegs! I'm thinkin' she has taen a notion o' the callant. What he is or what he diz we dinna ken, an' naebody can tell us."
"Mysterious being!" inwardly ejaculated (as the novelists' phrase goes) Mr. Micklewhame; then turning to Kirsty, with an inquiring look, he said—"Is he genteel in appearance? of good address? of pleasing manner? Is he"——
"Ou, ay!" was the reply; "he's a' that—I never see'd a genteeler young man in a' my days; and sae handsome too; sic black whiskers, an' sae broad aboot the shouthers. My certie, he's a stalworth chiel. An', as for his address; heth man, he often gies me a kiss in the mornings as he gangs oot, and promises me anither whan he comes back again. Ye needna be the least feared to sleep in the same room wi' him."
"Feared!" muttered Micklewhame. "Afraid of a man with black whiskers and broad shoulders! I flatter myself I never was afraid in my life." So saying, he elevated himself on his pins to the same degree as he rose at that moment in his own estimation. Then turning to the table whereon he had deposited his hat, he seized it up, and, with a dexterous jerk, stuck it on his head, at the same time exclaiming—"You may prepare the bed for me—I'll sleep in the room with this mysterious man; and, while the tea is getting ready, I'll just take a short stroll."
With these words he left the inn.
Mr. Andrew Micklewhame was a middle-aged man, with a rotundity of corpus, and a bachelor to boot. In his youthful days his love for the fair sex had partaken more of a general than a particular character; and now that he had arrived at the meridian of life, his taste had grown too particular for him to choose a partner for the remainder of his days from among those unmarried ladies whom he ranked among his acquaintances. "Girls," he would say, "are not now half so pretty, nor half so domestic, as they were in my young days." Then he would enter into a long tirade against the march of intellect, usually ending with a few observations upon pianoforte playing, and cooking a beef-steak, the latter accomplishment being in his opinion—as it is in that of every well-thinking person—the greater accomplishment of the two. One lady was too young; another was too old; a third was too tall; a fourth was too small; a fifth had no money; a sixth had money, but was downright ugly; a seventh was ill-tempered: in short, with every one on whom his matrimonial ideas had condescended to settle, he had some fault to find. There is no pleasing one who is predetermined not to be pleased.
Once, indeed, at a party to which he had been accidentally invited, he had felt a kind of a sort of a nervous tremulousness come over him on being set down at the supper table beside a lady, who, he discovered, was a widow; not from her garb, however; for widows—that is, young widows free of encumbrance—usually dress themselves in a much gayer manner than they were wont to do when "nice young maidens." He had made himself as agreeable as it was in his power to do, drinking wine with her at least half-a-dozen times, and otherwise doing, as he supposed, "the polite." Nay, he even went so far as to volunteer his services in seeing her home; and on the way over (she was from the country, and, pro tempore, resided with a friend in Bruntisfield Place, fronting the Links), he had the boldness to pop the question. He was accepted, and invited to breakfast with the lady the following morning. The morning came; but Andrew did not go—the fumes of the wine having subsided, and "Richard being himself again." He had taken a second thought on the subject, and determined on remaining a bachelor; by which arrangement the Widow Brown was, like Lord Ullin for his daughter, "left lamenting." Who her husband had been? whether she had money? what was her situation in life? were what Andrew tried long and earnestly to discover, but in vain—the Widow Brown seemed wrapped in mystery; and, from that hour, when he imprinted a kiss upon her lips, under a lamp-post, at two o'clock in the morning, in Bruntisfield Place, he had neither seen nor heard of her. Years—six in number—had elapsed since then, and Andrew had not ventured to accept another invitation to an evening party; but, as soon as his business for the day was over, he returned to his solitary lodging in Richmond Street; and, for the remainder of the evening, followed the example of the gentlemen of England, and "lived at home at ease," never stirring out, except to pay an occasional visit to the theatre.
The localities of Alloa were quite unknown to Andrew, for the best reason in the world—he had never been in it before; but, by dint of attending to the usual expedient resorted to on like occasions—that of following his nose—in the space of a few minutes he discovered that his feet, or fate, had led him into a dockyard, where a vessel was just upon the point of being wedded to the ocean. Some women and men—the former, as usual, predominant—were seated on logs beneath a shed; others, the more impatient seemingly, were walking about with umbrellas and parasols above their heads—young men with young misses—old men and babes. Children in their first childhood, of various shapes and sizes, chiefly barefooted, were scampering among the wet sawdust, round about the logs of wood, in the shed and out of it, quite absorbed in the spirit-stirring game of "tig"—ever and anon yelping out each other's names, and otherwise expressing their joy at not being "it." Among their seniors there was a great deal of gabble to very little purpose, with a preponderate share of bustle and agitation.
Carpenters were thumping away at the blocks on which the vessel rested, making more noise than progress. At length the blocks were fairly driven out, and away boomed the vessel into the Forth, amid the cheers of the assembled spectators. The general interest then subsided; and in a few minutes thereafter, with exception of the carpenters and some stray children, the dockyard presented the picture of emptiness. The din had ended; and the multitude, reversing the condition of Rob Roy, had left desolation where they had found plenty.
Tea over, Mr. Andrew Micklewhame, having first seen to his accommodation for the night, and secured a place in the Stirling omnibus, which was advertised to start the next morning precisely at nine, wended his way quietly to the theatre. It was in the Assembly Room—a rumbling old mansion, on the windows of which "time's effacing fingers" had taken pains to leave their mark so effectually, that sundry detachments of old soot-bedizzened "clouts" filled up those interstices where glass had once been. "The nonpareil company of comedians" entertained their audiences and held their orgies on the second floor—the first being occupied as an academy, where "young gentlemen are taken in and done for." The scenes in which the establishment rejoiced were five in number. Luckily, "Venice Preserved" did not require so many; but in "Rob Roy" the manager was compelled to make them perform double duty; and, consequently, the same scene was thrust on for the inside of a village inn apartment in Bailie Nicol Jarvie's, and the interior of Jean M'Alpine's change-house. The audience department was most gorgeous; there were boxes, pit, and gallery; or, in other words, front, middle, and back seats—the term "boxes" being applied to the front form, to which there was a back attached, most aristocratically garnished with green cloth, with brass nails in relief. At the farther end of this form "an efficient orchestra" was placed. It consisted of a boy to play the panpipes and the triangles at one and the same moment, a lad to thump away at the bass drum, and a blind man to perform on the clarionet—the last being dignified in the bills by the title of "leader of the orchestra, and conductor of music." The whole under the immediate superintendence of Mr. Ferdinand Gustavus Trash.