Jeanie could not help comparing the irregular yet extensive and commodious pile of building before her to the “Manses” in her own country, where a set of penurious heritors, professing all the while the devotion of their lives and fortunes to the Presbyterian establishment, strain their inventions to discover what may be nipped, and clipped, and pared from a building which forms but a poor accommodation even for the present incumbent, and, despite the superior advantage of stone-masonry, must, in the course of forty or fifty years, again burden their descendants with an expense, which, once liberally and handsomely employed, ought to have freed their estates from a recurrence of it for more than a century at least.
Behind the Rector’s house the ground sloped down to a small river, which, without possessing the romantic vivacity and rapidity of a northern stream, was, nevertheless, by its occasional appearance through the ranges of willows and poplars that crowned its banks, a very pleasing accompaniment to the landscape. “It was the best trouting stream,” said the beadle, whom the patience of Jeanie, and especially the assurance that she was not about to become a burden to the parish, had rendered rather communicative, “the best trouting stream in all Lincolnshire; for when you got lower, there was nought to be done wi’ fly-fishing.”
Turning aside from the principal entrance, he conducted Jeanie towards a sort of portal connected with the older part of the building, which was chiefly occupied by servants, and knocking at the door, it was opened by a servant in grave purple livery, such as befitted a wealthy and dignified clergyman.
“How dost do, Tummas?” said the beadle—“and how’s young Measter Staunton?”
“Why, but poorly—but poorly, Measter Stubbs.—Are you wanting to see his Reverence?”
“Ay, ay, Tummas; please to say I ha’ brought up the young woman as came to service to-day with mad Madge Murdockson seems to be a decentish koind o’ body; but I ha’ asked her never a question. Only I can tell his Reverence that she is a Scotchwoman, I judge, and as flat as the fens of Holland.”
Tummas honoured Jeanie Deans with such a stare, as the pampered domestics of the rich, whether spiritual or temporal, usually esteem it part of their privilege to bestow upon the poor, and then desired Mr. Stubbs and his charge to step in till he informed his master of their presence.
The room into which he showed them was a sort of steward’s parlour, hung with a county map or two, and three or four prints of eminent persons connected with the county, as Sir William Monson, James York the blacksmith of Lincoln,* and the famous Peregrine, Lord Willoughby, in complete armour, looking as when he said in the words of the legend below the engraving,—
* [Author of the Union of Honour, a treatise on English Heraldry. London, 1641.]
“Stand to it, noble pikemen,
And face ye well about;
And shoot ye sharp, bold bowmen,
And we will keep them out.
“Ye musquet and calliver-men,
Do you prove true to me,
I’ll be the foremost man in fight,
Said brave Lord Willoughbee.”