“Because,” said Jeanie, with modest confidence, and great and evident self-gratulation, “we have been thought so particular in making cheese, that some folk think it as gude as the real Dunlop; and if your honour’s Grace wad but accept a stane or twa, blithe, and fain, and proud it wad make us? But maybe ye may like the ewe-milk, that is, the Buckholmside* cheese better; or maybe the gait-milk, as ye come frae the Highlands—and I canna pretend just to the same skeel o’ them; but my cousin Jean, that lives at Lockermachus in Lammermuir, I could speak to her, and—”
* The hilly pastures of Buckholm, which the Author now surveys,—“Not in the frenzy of a dreamer’s eye,”—are famed for producing the best ewe-milk cheese in the south of Scotland.
“Quite unnecessary,” said the Duke; “the Dunlop is the very cheese of which I am so fond, and I will take it as the greatest favour you can do me to send one to Caroline Park. But remember, be on honour with it, Jeanie, and make it all yourself, for I am a real good judge.”
“I am not feared,” said Jeanie, confidently, “that I may please your Honour; for I am sure you look as if you could hardly find fault wi’ onybody that did their best; and weel is it my part, I trow, to do mine.”
This discourse introduced a topic upon which the two travellers, though so different in rank and education, found each a good deal to say. The Duke, besides his other patriotic qualities, was a distinguished agriculturist, and proud of his knowledge in that department. He entertained Jeanie with his observations on the different breeds of cattle in Scotland, and their capacity for the dairy, and received so much information from her practical experience in return, that he promised her a couple of Devonshire cows in reward for the lesson. In short his mind was so transported back to his rural employments and amusements, that he sighed when his carriage stopped opposite to the old hackney-coach, which Archibald had kept in attendance at the place where they had left it. While the coachman again bridled his lean cattle, which had been indulged with a bite of musty hay, the Duke cautioned Jeanie not to be too communicative to her landlady concerning what had passed. “There is,” he said, “no use of speaking of matters till they are actually settled; and you may refer the good lady to Archibald, if she presses you hard with questions. She is his old acquaintance, and he knows how to manage with her.”
He then took a cordial farewell of Jeanie, and told her to be ready in the ensuing week to return to Scotland—saw her safely established in her hackney-coach, and rolled of in his own carriage, humming a stanza of the ballad which he is said to have composed:—
“At the sight of Dumbarton once again,
I’ll cock up my bonnet and march amain,
With my claymore hanging down to my heel,
To whang at the bannocks of barley meal.”
Perhaps one ought to be actually a Scotsman to conceive how ardently, under all distinctions of rank and situation, they feel their mutual connection with each other as natives of the same country. There are, I believe, more associations common to the inhabitants of a rude and wild, than of a well-cultivated and fertile country; their ancestors have more seldom changed their place of residence; their mutual recollection of remarkable objects is more accurate; the high and the low are more interested in each other’s welfare; the feelings of kindred and relationship are more widely extended, and in a word, the bonds of patriotic affection, always honourable even when a little too exclusively strained, have more influence on men’s feelings and actions.
The rumbling hackney-coach, which tumbled over the (then) execrable London pavement, at a rate very different from that which had conveyed the ducal carriage to Richmond, at length deposited Jeanie Deans and her attendant at the national sign of the Thistle. Mrs. Glass, who had been in long and anxious expectation, now rushed, full of eager curiosity and open-mouthed interrogation, upon our heroine, who was positively unable to sustain the overwhelming cataract of her questions, which burst forth with the sublimity of a grand gardyloo:—
“Had she seen the Duke, God bless him—the Duchess—the young ladies?— Had she seen the King, God bless him—the Queen—the Prince of Wales—the Princess—or any of the rest of the royal family?—Had she got her sister’s pardon?—Was it out and out—or was it only a commutation of punishment?—How far had she gone—where had she driven to—whom had she seen—what had been said—what had kept her so long?”