My father started to help him with his own hand, and in due measure; but, infinitely to my amusement, Peter got possession of the bottle by the neck, and my father’s ideas of hospitality were far too scrupulous to permit his attempting, by any direct means, to redeem it; so that Peter returned to the table triumphant, with his prey in his clutch.
‘Better have a wine-glass, Mr. Peebles,’ said my father, in an admonitory tone, ‘you will find it pretty strong.’
‘If the kirk is ower muckle, we can sing mass in the quire,’ said Peter, helping himself in the goblet out of which he had been drinking the small beer. ‘What is it, usquebaugh?—BRANDY, as I am an honest man! I had almost forgotten the name and taste of brandy. Mr. Fairford elder, your good health’ (a mouthful of brandy), ‘Mr. Alan Fairford, wishing you well through your arduous undertaking’ (another go-down of the comfortable liquor). ‘And now, though you have given a tolerable breviate of this great lawsuit, of whilk everybody has heard something that has walked the boards in the Outer House (here’s to ye again, by way of interim decreet) yet ye have omitted to speak a word of the arrestments.’
‘I was just coming to that point, Mr. Peebles.’
‘Or of the action of suspension of the charge on the bill.’
‘I was just coming to that.’
‘Or the advocation of the Sheriff-Court process.’
‘I was just coming to it.’
‘As Tweed comes to Melrose, I think,’ said the litigant; and then filling his goblet about a quarter full of brandy, as if in absence of mind, ‘Oh, Mr. Alan Fairford, ye are a lucky man to buckle to such a cause as mine at the very outset! it is like a specimen of all causes, man. By the Regiam, there is not a REMEDIUM JURIS in the practiques but ye’ll find a spice o’t. Here’s to your getting weel through with it—Pshut—I am drinking naked spirits, I think. But if the heathen he ower strong, we’ll christen him with the brewer’ (here he added a little small beer to his beverage, paused, rolled his eyes, winked, and proceeded),—‘Mr. Fairford—the action of assault and battery, Mr. Fairford, when I compelled the villain Plainstanes to pull my nose within two steps of King Charles’s statue, in the Parliament Close—there I had him in a hose-net. Never man could tell me how to shape that process—no counsel that ever selled mind could condescend and say whether it were best to proceed by way of petition and complaint, AD VINDICTAM PUBLICAM, with consent of his Majesty’s advocate, or by action on the statute for battery PENDENTE LITE, whilk would be the winning my plea at once, and so getting a back-door out of court.—By the Regiam, that beef and brandy is unco het at my heart—I maun try the ale again’ (sipped a little beer); ‘and the ale’s but cauld, I maun e’en put in the rest of the brandy.’
He was as good as his word, and proceeded in so loud and animated a style of elocution, thumping the table, drinking and snuffing alternately, that my father, abandoning all attempts to interrupt him, sat silent and ashamed, suffering, and anxious for the conclusion of the scene.