“Right, my good madam; soft is the very word, though it has been some time since I heard it. I have cast a double hank about the round world since I last heard of a soft[21] morning.”
“You will be from these parts, then?” said the writer, ingeniously putting a case, which, he hoped, would induce the stranger to explain himself. “And yet, sir,” he added, after a pause, “I was thinking that Touchwood is not a Scottish name, at least that I ken of.”
“Scottish name?—no,” replied the traveller; “but a man may have been in these parts before, without being a native—or, being a native, he may have had some reason to change his name—there are many reasons why men change their names.”
“Certainly, and some of them very good ones,” said the lawyer; “as in the common case of an heir of entail, where deed of provision and tailzie is maist ordinarily implemented by taking up name and arms.”
“Ay, or in the case of a man having made the country too hot for him under his own proper appellative,” said Mr. Touchwood.
“That is a supposition, sir,” replied the lawyer, “which it would ill become me to put.—But at any rate, if you knew this country formerly, ye cannot but be marvellously pleased with the change we have been making since the American war—hill-sides bearing clover instead of heather—rents doubled, trebled, quadrupled—the auld reekie dungeons pulled down, and gentlemen living in as good houses as you will see any where in England.”
“Much good may it do them, for a pack of fools!” replied Mr. Touchwood, hastily.
“You do not seem much delighted with our improvements, sir?” said the banker, astonished to hear a dissentient voice where he conceived all men were unanimous.
“Pleased!” answered the stranger—“Yes, as much pleased as I am with the devil, who I believe set many of them agoing. Ye have got an idea that every thing must be changed—Unstable as water, ye shall not excel—I tell ye, there have been more changes in this poor nook of yours within the last forty years, than in the great empires of the East for the space of four thousand, for what I know.”
“And why not,” replied Bindloose, “if they be changes for the better?”