“Hoot ay, my lord, hoot ay,” said the king; “ye maun tak him to task roundly. I grant you should speak more in the vein of Demea than Mitio, vi nempe et via pervulgata patrum; but as for not seeing him again, and he your only son, that is altogether out of reason. I tell ye, man, (but I would not for a boddle that Baby Charles heard me,) that he might gie the glaiks to half the lasses of Lonnun, ere I could find in my heart speak such harsh words as you have said of this deil of a Dalgarno of yours.”
“May it please your Majesty to permit me to retire,” said Lord Huntinglen, “and dispose of the case according to your own royal sense of justice, for I desire no favour for him.”
“Aweel, my lord, so be it; and if your lordship can think,” added the Monarch, “of any thing in our power which might comfort you—”
“Your Majesty's gracious sympathy,” said Lord Huntinglen, “has already comforted me as far as earth can; the rest must be from the King of kings.”
“To Him I commend you, my auld and faithful servant,” said James with emotion, as the earl withdrew from his presence. The king remained fixed in thought for some time, and then said to Heriot, “Jingling Geordie, ye ken all the privy doings of our Court, and have dune so these thirty years, though, like a wise man, ye hear, and see, and say nothing. Now, there is a thing I fain wad ken, in the way of philosophical inquiry—Did you ever hear of the umquhile Lady Huntinglen, the departed Countess of this noble earl, ganging a wee bit gleed in her walk through the world; I mean in the way of slipping a foot, casting a leglin-girth, or the like, ye understand me?”
[Footnote: A leglin-girth is the lowest hoop upon a leglin, or milk-pail. Allan Ramsay applies the phrase in the same metaphorical sense.
“Or bairns can read, they first maun spell, I learn'd this frae my
mammy, And cast a leglin-girth mysell,
Lang ere I married Tammy.”
Christ's Kirk On The Green.]
“On my word as an honest man,” said George Heriot, somewhat surprised at the question, “I never heard her wronged by the slightest breath of suspicion. She was a worthy lady, very circumspect in her walk, and lived in great concord with her husband, save that the good Countess was something of a puritan, and kept more company with ministers than was altogether agreeable to Lord Huntinglen, who is, as your Majesty well knows, a man of the old rough world, that will drink and swear.”
“O Geordie!” exclaimed the king, “these are auld-warld frailties, of whilk we dare not pronounce even ourselves absolutely free. But the warld grows worse from day to day, Geordie. The juveniles of this age may weel say with the poet—
'Aetas parentum, pejor avis, tulit Nos nequiores—'