“My sister will never marry,” said John Mowbray.
“That's easily said,” replied the writer; “but as broken a ship's come to land. If ony body kend o' the chance she has o' the estate, there's mony a weel-doing man would think little of the bee in her bonnet.”
“Harkye, Mr. Meiklewham,” said the Laird, “I will be obliged to you if you will speak of Miss Mowbray with the respect due to her father's daughter, and my sister.”
“Nae offence, St. Ronan's, nae offence,” answered the man of law; “but ilka man maun speak sae as to be understood,—that is, when he speaks about business. Ye ken yoursell, that Miss Clara is no just like other folk; and were I you—it's my duty to speak plain—I wad e'en gie in a bit scroll of a petition to the Lords, to be appointed Curator Bonis, in respect of her incapacity to manage her own affairs.”
“Meiklewham,” said Mowbray, “you are a”——and then stopped short.
“What am I, Mr. Mowbray?” said Meiklewham, somewhat sternly—“What am I? I wad be glad to ken what I am.”
“A very good lawyer, I dare say,” replied St. Ronan's, who was too much in the power of his agent to give way to his first impulse. “But I must tell you, that rather than take such a measure against poor Clara, as you recommend, I would give her up the estate, and become an ostler or a postilion for the rest of my life.”
“Ah, St. Ronan's,” said the man of law, “if you had wished to keep up the auld house, you should have taken another trade, than to become an ostler or a postilion. What ailed you, man, but to have been a lawyer as weel as other folk? My auld Maister had a wee bit Latin about rerum dominos gentemque togatam, whilk signified, he said, that all lairds should be lawyers.”
“All lawyers are likely to become lairds, I think,” replied Mowbray; “they purchase our acres by the thousand, and pay us, according to the old story, with a multiplepoinding, as your learned friends call it, Mr. Meiklewham.”
“Weel—and mightna you have purchased as weel as other folk?”