“Bravely, sir,” said Richie; “it was but a bit dover. I was bred at the West-Port, and my cantle will stand a clour wad bring a stot down.”
“Where does your master lodge?”
“We pit up, an it like your honour,” replied the Scot, “in a sma' house at the fit of ane of the wynds that gang down to the water-side, with a decent man, John Christie, a ship-chandler, as they ca't. His father came from Dundee. I wotna the name of the wynd, but it's right anent the mickle kirk yonder; and your honour will mind, that we pass only by our family-name of simple Mr. Nigel Olifaunt, as keeping ourselves retired for the present, though in Scotland we be called the Lord Nigel.”
“It is wisely done of your master,” said the citizen. “I will find out your lodgings, though your direction be none of the clearest.” So saying, and slipping a piece of money at the same time into Richie Moniplies's hand, he bade him hasten home, and get into no more affrays.
“I will take care of that now, sir,” said Richie, with a look of importance, “having a charge about me. And so, wussing ye a' weel, with special thanks to these twa young gentlemen——”
“I am no gentleman,” said Jenkin, flinging his cap on his head; “I am a tight London 'prentice, and hope to be a freeman one day. Frank may write himself gentleman, if he will.”
“I was a gentleman once,” said Tunstall, “and I hope I have done nothing to lose the name of one.”
“Weel, weel, as ye list,” said Richie Moniplies; “but I am mickle beholden to ye baith—and I am not a hair the less like to bear it in mind that I say but little about it just now.—Gude-night to you, my kind countryman.” So saying, he thrust out of the sleeve of his ragged doublet a long bony hand and arm, on which the muscles rose like whip-cord. Master George shook it heartily, while Jenkin and Frank exchanged sly looks with each other.
Richie Moniplies would next have addressed his thanks to the master of the shop, but seeing him, as he afterwards said, “scribbling on his bit bookie, as if he were demented,” he contented his politeness with “giving him a hat,” touching, that is, his bonnet, in token of salutation, and so left the shop.
“Now, there goes Scotch Jockey, with all his bad and good about him,” said Master George to Master David, who suspended, though unwillingly, the calculations with which he was engaged, and keeping his pen within an inch of the tablets, gazed on his friend with great lack-lustre eyes, which expressed any thing rather than intelligence or interest in the discourse addressed to him.—“That fellow,” proceeded Master George, without heeding his friend's state of abstraction, “shows, with great liveliness of colouring, how our Scotch pride and poverty make liars and braggarts of us; and yet the knave, whose every third word to an Englishman is a boastful lie, will, I warrant you, be a true and tender friend and follower to his master, and has perhaps parted with his mantle to him in the cold blast, although he himself walked in cuerpo, as the Don says.—Strange! that courage and fidelity—for I will warrant that the knave is stout—should have no better companion than this swaggering braggadocio humour.—But you mark me not, friend Davie.”