“What is to be done?” said I. “It strikes me, gentlemen, that this may turn out to be a very unpleasant business.”
“Nae fears—nae fears!” said Toddy Tam, looking, however, the reverse of comfortable. “It will hae been some callant trying to fley us, that’s a’. But, mind ye—no a word o’ this to ony living human being, and aboon a’ to Provost Binkie. I’ve keepit him for four years in the dark, and it never wad do to show the cat the road to the kirn!”
I acquiesced in the precautionary arrangement, and we parted; Toddy Tam and his friends having, by this time, disposed of all the surplus fluid. It was very late before I reached the Provost’s dwelling.
I suppose that next morning I had overslept myself; for, when I awoke, I heard Miss Binkie in full operation at the piano. This time, however, she was not singing alone, for a male voice was audible in conjunction with hers.
“It would be an amazing consolation to me if somebody would carry off that girl!” thought I, as I proceeded with my toilet. “I made a deuced fool of myself to her yesterday; and, to say the truth, I don’t very well know how to look her in the face!”
However, there was no help for it, so I proceeded down-stairs. The first individual I recognised in the breakfast parlour was M’Corkindale. He was engaged in singing, along with Miss Binkie, some idiotical catch about a couple of albino mice.
“Bob!” cried I, “my dear Bob, I am delighted to see you;—what on earth has brought you here?”
“A gig and a foundered mare,” replied the matter-of-fact M’Corkindale. “The fact is, that I was anxious to hear about your canvass; and, as there was nothing to do in Glasgow—by the way, Dunshunner, the banks have put on the screw again—I resolved to satisfy my own curiosity in person. I arrived this morning, and Miss Binkie has been kind enough to ask me to stay breakfast.”
“I am sure both papa and I are always happy to see Mr M’Corkindale,” said Margaret impressively.
“I am afraid,” said I, “that I have interrupted your music: I did not know, M’Corkindale, that you were so eminent a performer.”