"Tuts, lassies, it was a' a piece o' fun," said the good-humoured girl. "I'm sure everybody saw that but yersels. Besides, the man's weel aneugh—na, a gude deal mair than that, if he was only a wee better clad. There's no a better-lookin man in the room; and I wish, lassies," she added, "ye may get as guid dancers in your partners—that's a'."
"Umph! a bonny like taste ye hae, Jeanie, an' a very strange notion o' propriety!" exclaimed the elder, with another toss of the head.
"To dance wi' a fiddler!" simpered out the younger, who, by the way, was no chicken either, being but a trifle on the right side of thirty.
"Ay, to be sure—dance wi' a fiddler or a piper either. I'll dance wi' baith o' them—an' what for no?" replied Jeanie. "There's neither sin nor shame in't; and I'll dance wi' him again, if he'll only but ask me."
"An' faith he'll do that wi' a' the pleasure in the warld, my bonny lassie," quoth the intrepid fiddler, leaping down once more from his high place; for, there having been a cessation of both music and dancing while the conversation above recorded was going on, he had heard every word of it.—"Wi' a' the pleasure in the warld," he said, advancing towards Jeanie Harrison, and making one of his best bows of invitation; and again a shout of approbation from the company urged Jeanie to accept it, which she readily did, at once to gratify her friends, and to provoke the Misses Murray.
Having accordingly taken her place on the floor, and other couples having been mustered for the set, Jeanie's partner again called on Willie to strike up, again the dancers started, and again the fiddler astonished and delighted the company with the grace and elegance of his performances. On this occasion, however, the unknown musician's predilection for his fair partner exhibited a more unequivocal character; and he even ventured to inquire if he might call at her father's, to amuse the family for an hour or so with his fiddle.
"Nae objection in the warld," replied Jeanie. "Come as aften as ye like; and the aftener the better, if ye only bring yer fiddle wi' ye, for we're a' fond o' music."
"A bargain be't," said the gallant fiddler; and, at the conclusion of the reel, he again resumed his place on the platform and his fiddle.
"Time and the hour," says Shakspere, "will wear through the roughest day;" and so they will, also, through the merriest night, as the joyous party of whom we are speaking now soon found.
Exhaustion and lassitude, though long defied, finally triumphed; and even the very candles seemed wearied of giving light; and, under the influence of these mirth-destroying feelings, the party at length broke up, and all departed, excepting the two fiddlers.