"What's the matter, Mr. Solicitor?" I asked, instinctively falling into the whispering tone proper in sick rooms. "Is it the state of Scotch business that weighs upon your mind? or is it true, as whispered, that necessity has been discovered for bringing in Bill amending the Borough Police and Health Act, 1892, with its 435 clauses?"
"No," said Asher; "I'm thinking of neither. My thoughts tend in quite another direction. My heart is at Deeside, my heart is not here. I have a moor there; you understand me—not a person of dark complexion, who, after much conversation, disposes of his wife with the assistance of a pillow. But a stretch of moorland, gorse-scented, grouse-haunted. I awoke early on Saturday morning hearing the popping of the guns in far-off Aboyne. Mere fancy, of course. You remember Charles Lamb's story about supping with some Scotchmen, and incidentally observing he only wished, to make the joy complete, that Burns were there? One by one the Scotchmen got up and explained to him that Burns had been dead for ever so many years, and that it was practically impossible, in view of the circumstances, that he could have been present; even, one of them added, supposing they knew Burns, and it had occurred to them to invite him. So you will say that Deeside, being hundreds of miles away, I could not hear the birds on the wing, or the pottering of the guns. In a sense, that is true; but I heard them all the same; worse still, heard them when I was in church yesterday, and should have been hearing something else. I wouldn't mind missing a day, a week, or, in the service of my Queen and country, a fortnight. What I see, and what gars me greet, is the endless vista of nights and days we shall spend here. If we get any shooting at all we shall begin with the pheasants.
"O my Bartley, shallow-pated! O my Tommy, such a bore!
O, my dear belovèd moorland, shall I see thee evermore?"
Asher's case representative of many; only his despair is the more eloquent.
Business done.—Marking time in Home-Rule debate.
