“Away with you!” cried the other, unheeding. “You are a plague to the neighbourhood. I will have you put in Montrose jail! To-morrow, I promise you, you will find yourself where you cannot make gentlemen’s houses into pandemoniums with your noise.”
“A’d like Brechin better,” rejoined the beggar; “it’s couthier in there.”
Balnillo was a humane man, and he prided himself, as all the world knew, on some improvements he had suggested in the Montrose prison. He was speechless.
“Ay,” continued Wattie, “a’m thinkin’ you’ve sent mony a better man than mysel’ to the tolbooth. But, dod! a’m no mindin’ that. A’m asking ye, whaur’s the painter-lad?”
One of Balnillo’s fatal qualities was his power of turning in mid-career of wrath or eloquence to daily with side-issues.
He swallowed the fury rising to his lips.
“What! Mr. Flemington?” he stammered. “What do you want of Mr. Flemington?”
“Is yon what they ca’ him? Well, a’m no seekin’ onything o’ him. It’s him that’s seekin’ me.”
Astonishment put everything else out of Balnillo’s mind. He glared at the intruder, his lips pursed, his fingers working.