“The procurator’s spoiled a’,” observed Ratcliffe, drily. And it was even so; for the question, put in so direct a shape, immediately awakened Madge to the propriety of being reserved upon those very topics on which Ratcliffe had indirectly seduced her to become communicative.
“What was’t ye were speering at us, sir?” she resumed, with an appearance of stolidity so speedily assumed, as showed there was a good deal of knavery mixed with her folly.
“I asked you,” said the procurator, “at what hour, and to what place, Robertson brought back your clothes.”
“Robertson?—Lord hand a care o’ us! what Robertson?”
“Why, the fellow we were speaking of, Gentle Geordie, as you call him.”
“Geordie Gentle!” answered Madge, with well-feigned amazement—“I dinna ken naebody they ca’ Geordie Gentle.”
“Come, my jo,” said Sharpitlaw, “this will not do; you must tell us what you did with these clothes of yours.”
Madge Wildfire made no answer, unless the question may seem connected with the snatch of a song with which she indulged the embarrassed investigator:—
“What did ye wi’ the bridal ring—bridal ring—bridal ring?
What did ye wi’ your wedding ring, ye little cutty quean, O?
I gied it till a sodger, a sodger, a sodger,
I gied it till a sodger, an auld true love o’ mine, O.”
Of all the madwomen who have sung and said, since the days of Hamlet the Dane, if Ophelia be the most affecting, Madge Wildfire was the most provoking.