When he came up to Butler again, he found him with his eyes fixed on the entrance of the Tolbooth, and apparently in deep thought.
“That seems a very strong door,” said Sir George, by way of saying something.
“It is so, sir,” said Butler, turning off and beginning to walk forward, “but it was my misfortune at one time to see it prove greatly too weak.”
At this moment, looking at his companion, he asked him whether he felt himself ill? and Sir George Staunton admitted, that he had been so foolish as to eat ice, which sometimes disagreed with him. With kind officiousness, that would not be gainsaid, and ere he could find out where he was going, Butler hurried Sir George into the friend’s house, near to the prison, in which he himself had lived since he came to town, being, indeed, no other than that of our old friend Bartoline Saddletree, in which Lady Staunton had served a short noviciate as a shop-maid. This recollection rushed on her husband’s mind, and the blush of shame which it excited overpowered the sensation of fear which had produced his former paleness. Good Mrs. Saddletree, however, bustled about to receive the rich English baronet as the friend of Mr. Butler, and requested an elderly female in a black gown to sit still, in a way which seemed to imply a wish, that she would clear the way for her betters. In the meanwhile, understanding the state of the case, she ran to get some cordial waters, sovereign, of course, in all cases of faintishness whatsoever. During her absence, her visitor, the female in black, made some progress out of the room, and might have left it altogether without particular observation, had she not stumbled at the threshold, so near Sir George Staunton, that he, in point of civility, raised her and assisted her to the door.
“Mrs. Porteous is turned very doited now, puir body,” said Mrs. Saddletree, as she returned with her bottle in her hand—“She is no sae auld, but she got a sair back-cast wi’ the slaughter o’ her husband—Ye had some trouble about that job, Mr. Butler.—I think, sir,” to Sir George, “ye had better drink out the haill glass, for to my een ye look waur than when ye came in.”
And, indeed, he grew as pale as a corpse, on recollecting who it was that his arm had so lately supported—the widow whom he had so large a share in making such.
“It is a prescribed job that case of Porteous now,” said old Saddletree, who was confined to his chair by the gout—“clean prescribed and out of date.”
“I am not clear of that, neighbour,” said Plumdamas, “for I have heard them say twenty years should rin, and this is but the fifty-ane— Porteous’s mob was in thretty-seven.”
“Ye’ll no teach me law, I think, neighbour—me that has four gaun pleas, and might hae had fourteen, an it hadna been the gudewife? I tell ye, if the foremost of the Porteous mob were standing there where that gentleman stands, the King’s Advocate wadna meddle wi’ him—it fa’s under the negative prescription.”
“Haud your din, carles,” said Mrs. Saddletree, “and let the gentleman sit down and get a dish of comfortable tea.”