“Weel, weel, weel—weel, weel, gudewife,” said Saddletree, “if he gangs daft, we’ll hae him cognosced—it’s a’ very weel.”
“It’s weel that ye think sae, Mr. Saddletree,” answered his helpmate, rather nettled at the indifference with which her report was received; “there’s mony ane wad hae thought themselves affronted, if sae mony customers had ca’d and naebody to answer them but women-folk; for a’ the lads were aff, as soon as your back was turned, to see Porteous hanged, that might be counted upon; and sae, you no being at hame—”
“Houts, Mrs. Saddletree,” said Bartoline, with an air of consequence, “dinna deave me wi’ your nonsense; I was under the necessity of being elsewhere—non omnia—as Mr. Crossmyloof said, when he was called by two macers at once—non omnia possumus—pessimus—possimis—I ken our law-latin offends Mr. Butler’s ears, but it means, Naebody, an it were the Lord President himsell, can do twa turns at ance.”
“Very right, Mr. Saddletree,” answered his careful helpmate, with a sarcastic smile; “and nae doubt it’s a decent thing to leave your wife to look after young gentlemen’s saddles and bridles, when ye gang to see a man, that never did ye nae ill, raxing a halter.”
“Woman,” said Saddletree, assuming an elevated tone, to which the meridian had somewhat contributed, “desist,—I say forbear, from intromitting with affairs thou canst not understand. D’ye think I was born to sit here brogging an elshin through bend-leather, when sic men as Duncan Forbes, and that other Arniston chield there, without muckle greater parts, if the close-head speak true, than mysell maun be presidents and king’s advocates, nae doubt, and wha but they? Whereas, were favour equally distribute, as in the days of the wight Wallace—”
“I ken naething we wad hae gotten by the wight Wallace,” said Mrs. Saddletree, “unless, as I hae heard the auld folk tell, they fought in thae days wi’ bend-leather guns, and then it’s a chance but what, if he had bought them, he might have forgot to pay for them. And as for the greatness of your parts, Bartley, the folk in the close-head* maun ken mair about them than I do, if they make sic a report of them.”
* [Close-head, the entrance of a blind alley.]
“I tell ye, woman,” said Saddletree, in high dudgeon, “that ye ken naething about these matters. In Sir William Wallace’s days there was nae man pinned down to sic a slavish wark as a saddler’s, for they got ony leather graith that they had use for ready-made out of Holland.”
“Well,” said Butler, who was, like many of his profession, something of a humorist and dry joker, “if that be the case, Mr. Saddletree, I think we have changed for the better; since we make our own harness, and only import our lawyers from Holland.”
“It’s ower true, Mr. Butler,” answered Bartoline, with a sigh; “if I had had the luck—or rather, if my father had had the sense to send me to Leyden and Utrecht to learn the Substitutes and Pandex—”