"I view, with mair than kingly pride,
My hearth—a heaven o' rapture;
While Mary's hand in mine will slide,
As Jockie reads his chapter."
THE SOUTER'S WEDDING.
"Not to flatter you, Maister Brown," said the souter, when the dominie had finished the account of his courtship, "your wooing is a capital tale in itself; and could it only be put into prent, in the simple and honest manner—for ye hide nothing—that you've gone owre it, I'll venture to say that a more laughable story is no in the book. Deil o' the like o' it I ever heard; so muckle duplicity on the one hand, and sheepishness on the other; and, after a', to think that ye should have won your wife's heart by such a wily stratagem. Ye talked, if I remember rightly, o' being weel up in years ere ye fell in love; but atweel I cannot say the same, for I was owre head and ears in it before I was rightly into my teens. Having my faither's business in Selkirk to fall back upon, and being rather handsome, and no that ill-farand, and naturally gifted, like the rest o' our family—for our cleverness a' came by the Maxwells—that's our mother's side o' the house—it is not to be wondered at that the young lassies o' the place should have held a great racket about me. I was even styled the leddies' man; and, night after night, I might have been seen strolling away down by the Pleasance, in company with the Jacksons—high as they hold their heads above you and me now, Maister Brown; and, at other times, with the braw niece o' the dean o' guild. At our annual fairs, too, I have seen the genteeler lasses—farmers' daughters and the like—flocking about me for their fairing in perfect droves; and I'm certain there was not one o' them, either from Selkirkshire or Roxburghshire, but who would have waded the Tweed for me, had I but held up my thumb. I was very ill to please, however; for, unless I could get one possessed o' youth, beauty, and siller, I had resolved never to marry. These three requisites I considered indispensable in a wife; and though, at times, I felt my prudent resolution nearly sapped by the winning gentleness o' Susan Baillie, I still prevented the sacred citadel o' my heart from being openly taken, and kept cautiously speculating upon the untoward consequences o' a rash and imprudent marriage. My faither dropping off just as I was entering upon my three-and-twentieth year, his business was consigned owre to me, with the whole o' his effects; and, although the heavy bereavement did not fail to make a suitable impression upon my heart, I felt my personal consequence greatly increased, from the circumstance o' standing in his shoon. The Johnsons went actually mad about me, besides scores o' others, as weel to do in the world as any Johnson among them; and many a trap was set for me, by auld crones who had daughters at a marriageable age hanging on their hands. I continued, however, to gallant away among them, as a kind o' general lover; and at a' their select parties, there was I to be found figuring.
Thus weeks, and months, and years passed on, and I still remained in single blessedness, while the young leddies o' my acquaintance kept stepping off one by one—some marrying tradesmen's sons, and others the young gentlemen belonging to the neighbouring counties, till not one o' a' the number that I used to caper about with was left for my taking. The very bairns o' some o' them, breeched and unbreeched, were big aneugh to come to my shop and get the measure o' their shoon; and on one occasion, when Susan Baillie's auld Irish nurse—Susan was then Mrs Captain Fraser—brought down the auldest lassie in her hand, to get a pair o' red boots fitted on, I declare the very tears came into my eyes when I saw the little creature—she looked so like her mother!
"Losh, me!" says I to Peggy Byrne, "that lassie makes me an auld man."
"Och, and it's your own fault, Master Blackwell," says the nurse, "that your ould at all at all; for you, who are a gintleman born, should be glad to have the mistress and purty childer at home, even to spake to."
"A wife is an expensive piece o' furniture to keep about a house," says I.
"I'm sorry to the heart for you, sir," says she; "and if you care for yoursilf, you'll not let a thrifle of money prevint you from trating yoursilf to some genteel cratur of a wife. Will you just give a look to this swate girleen, God bless it!" added she, kissing the wee lassie, "and say if ye could grudge her bit of brade, poor sowl, or the brade of the moder that bore her?"
"But I cannot get anybody to please me, woman," says I, jocularly.