“By no means, my liege,” answered Heriot. “It is a subject he states himself as quite indifferent about, so long as it can pleasure your Majesty.”
“Body of us, man!” said the king, “it is the speech of a true man and a loving subject, and we will grace him accordingly—what though he be but a carle—a twopenny cat may look at a king. Swith, man! have him—pundite fores.—Moniplies?—They should have called the chield Monypennies, though I sall warrant you English think we have not such a name in Scotland.”
“It is an ancient and honourable stock, the Monypennies,” said Sir Mungo Malagrowther; “the only loss is, there are sae few of the name.”
“The family seems to increase among your countrymen, Sir Mungo,” said Master Lowestoffe, whom Lord Glenvarloch had invited to be present, “since his Majesty's happy accession brought so many of you here.”
“Right, sir—right,” said Sir Mungo, nodding and looking at George Heriot; “there have some of ourselves been the better of that great blessing to the English nation.”
As he spoke, the door flew open, and in entered, to the astonishment of Lord Glenvarloch, his late serving-man Richie Moniplies, now sumptuously, nay, gorgeously, attired in a superb brocaded suit, and leading in his hand the tall, thin, withered, somewhat distorted form of Martha Trapbois, arrayed in a complete dress of black velvet, which suited so strangely with the pallid and severe melancholy of her countenance, that the king himself exclaimed, in some perturbation, “What the deil has the fallow brought us here? Body of our regal selves! it is a corpse that has run off with the mort-cloth!”
“May I sifflicate your Majesty to be gracious unto her?” said Richie; “being that she is, in respect of this morning's wark, my ain wedded wife, Mrs. Martha Moniplies by name.”
“Saul of our body, man! but she looks wondrous grim,” answered King James. “Art thou sure she has not been in her time maid of honour to Queen Mary, our kinswoman, of redhot memory?”
“I am sure, an it like your Majesty, that she has brought me fifty thousand pounds of good siller, and better; and that has enabled me to pleasure your Majesty, and other folk.”
“Ye need have said naething about that, man,” said the king; “we ken our obligations in that sma' matter, and we are glad this rudas spouse of thine hath bestowed her treasure on ane wha kens to put it to the profit of his king and country.—But how the deil did ye come by her, man?”