“It will be for your ain gude,” insinuated the town-clerk.
“Dinna keep the Bailie waiting,” urged the assistants.
She remained doggedly silent for two or three minutes, casting around a malignant and sulky glance, that seemed to enjoy the anxious suspense with which they waited her answer. And then she broke forth at once,—“A’ that I ken about him is, that he was neither soldier nor gentleman, but just a thief and a blackguard, like maist o’ yoursells, dears—What will ye gie me for that news, now?—He wad hae served the gude town lang or provost or bailie wad hae fund that out, my jo!”
While these matters were in discussion, Madge Wildfire entered, and her first exclamation was, “Eh! see if there isna our auld ne’er-do-weel deevil’s-buckie o’ a mither—Hegh, sirs! but we are a hopeful family, to be twa o’ us in the Guard at ance—But there were better days wi’ us ance—were there na, mither?”
Old Maggie’s eyes had glistened with something like an expression of pleasure when she saw her daughter set at liberty. But either her natural affection, like that of the tigress, could not be displayed without a strain of ferocity, or there was something in the ideas which Madge’s speech awakened, that again stirred her cross and savage temper. “What signifies what we, were, ye street-raking limmer!” she exclaimed, pushing her daughter before her to the door, with no gentle degree of violence. “I’se tell thee what thou is now—thou’s a crazed hellicat Bess o’ Bedlam, that sall taste naething but bread and water for a fortnight, to serve ye for the plague ye hae gien me—and ower gude for ye, ye idle taupie!”
Madge, however, escaped from her mother at the door, ran back to the foot of the table, dropped a very low and fantastic courtesy to the judge, and said, with a giggling laugh,—“Our minnie’s sair mis-set, after her ordinar, sir—She’ll hae had some quarrel wi’ her auld gudeman—that’s Satan, ye ken, sirs.” This explanatory note she gave in a low confidential tone, and the spectators of that credulous generation did not hear it without an involuntary shudder. “The gudeman and her disna aye gree weel, and then I maun pay the piper; but my back’s broad eneugh to bear’t a’—an’ if she hae nae havings, that’s nae reason why wiser folk shouldna hae some.” Here another deep courtesy, when the ungracious voice of her mother was heard.
“Madge, ye limmer! If I come to fetch ye!”
“Hear till her,” said Madge. “But I’ll wun out a gliff the night for a’ that, to dance in the moonlight, when her and the gudeman will be whirrying through the blue lift on a broom-shank, to see Jean Jap, that they hae putten intill the Kirkcaldy Tolbooth—ay, they will hae a merry sail ower Inchkeith, and ower a’ the bits o’ bonny waves that are poppling and plashing against the rocks in the gowden glimmer o’ the moon, ye ken.—I’m coming, mother—I’m coming,” she concluded, on hearing a scuffle at the door betwixt the beldam and the officers, who were endeavouring to prevent her re-entrance. Madge then waved her hand wildly towards the ceiling, and sung, at the topmost pitch of her voice,
“Up in the air,
On my bonny grey mare,
And I see, and I see, and I see her yet;”
and with a hop, skip, and jump, sprung out of the room, as the witches of Macbeth used, in less refined days, to seem to fly upwards from the stage.