"His granddaughter? Oh, yes, to be sure—sometimes. He was fond of coming down the night before we went to press, and looking over the columns of Scotch news, and having a chat. You see we have to boil down the smaller Scotch papers for local news—news that the bigger papers don't touch; and very often you notice a name that is familiar to you, or something of that kind. Well, now, I wish the old man was here this very minute! I do indeed—most heartily. We'd let bygones be bygones—no doubt I was mistaken—I'll back George Bethune for a true and loyal Scot. Ah say, man," continued Mr. Anstruther, pulling out his big silver watch—and now all his assumption of the reserved American manner was gone, and he was talking with enthusiastic emphasis—"There's a countryman of mine—a most worthy fellow—close by here, who would be glad to see any friend of old George Bethune's. It's just about his lunch time; and he'll no grudge ye a farl of oatcake and a bit of Dunlop cheese; in fact nothing pleases him better than keeping open house for his cronies. A man of sterling worth; and a man of substance, too: sooner or later, I expect, he'll be going away back to the old country and buying a bit place for himself in his native county of Aberdeen. Well, well," said the Editor, as he locked his desk, and put on his hat, and opened the door for his visitor, "and to think it was but the other day ye were walking along Princes Street in Edinburgh! Did ye go out at night, when the old town was lit up?—a grand sight, wasn't it—nothing like it in the world! Ye must tell honest John—John MacVittie, that is—that ye've just come straight from the 'land of brown heath and shaggy wood,' and ye'll no want for a welcome!"
And indeed it was a very frank and friendly welcome he received when they at length reached Mr. MacVittie's place of business, and were shown into the merchant's private room. Here they found himself and his two partners (all Scotchmen) about to sit down at table; and places were immediately prepared for the new-comers. The meal was a much more varied affair than the Editor had foreshadowed: its remarkable feature being, as Vincent was informed, that nearly everything placed on the board had been sent over from Scotland. Mr. MacVittie made a little apology.
"It's a kind of hobby of mine," said he; "and even with perishable things it's not so difficult nowadays, the ice-houses of the big steamers being so convenient. What would you like to drink, sir? I can give ye a choice of Talisker, Glenlivet, Long John, and Lagavulin; but perhaps ye would prefer something lighter in the middle of the day. I hope you don't object to the smell of the peats; we Scotch folk are rather fond of it; I think our good friend here, Anstruther, would rather have a sniff of the peat than the smell of the best canvas-back duck that was ever carried through a kitchen. I get those peats sent over from Islay: you see, I try to have Scotland—or some fragments of it—brought to me, since I cannot go to it."
"But why don't you go to Scotland, sir?" said Vincent—knowing he was speaking to a man of wealth.
"At my time of life," Mr. MacVittie answered, "one falls into certain ways and grooves, and it's an ill job getting out of them. No, I do not think I shall ever be in Scotland again, until I'm taken there—in a box. I shall have to be like the lady in 'The Gay Goss-hawk'—
'An asking, an asking, my father dear,
An asking grant ye me!
That if I die in merry England,
In Scotland you'll bury me.'"
"Oh, nonsense, John!" one of his partners cried. "Nonsense, man! We'll have you building a castle up somewhere about Kincardine O'Neil; and every autumn we'll go over and shoot your grouse and kill your salmon for you. That's liker it!"
Now here were three sharp and shrewd business men met together in the very heart of one of the great commercial cities of the world; and the fourth was a purveyor of news (Vincent did not count: he was so wonderstruck at meeting people who had known George Bethune and Maisrie in former days, and so astonished and fascinated by any chance reference to them that he did not care to propound any opinions of his own: he was well content to listen) and it might naturally have been supposed that their talk would have been of the public topics of the hour—politics home and foreign, the fluctuations of trade, dealings with that portentous surplus that is always getting in the way, and so forth. But it was nothing of the kind. It was all about the dinner of the Burns' Society of New York, to be given at Sutherland's in Liberty-street the following evening, in celebration of the birthday of the Scotch poet; and Tom MacVittie—a huge man with a reddish-brown beard and a bald head—in the enthusiasm of the moment was declaring that again and again, on coming across a song, by some one of the minor Scotch poets, that was particularly fine, he wished he had the power to steal it and hand it over to the Ayrshire bard—no doubt on the principle that, 'whosoever hath, to him shall be given.' Then there was a comparison of this gem and that; favourites were mentioned and extolled; the air was thick with Willie Laidlaw, Allan Cunningham, Nicol, Hogg, Motherwell, Tannahill, and the rest; while the big Tom MacVittie, returning to his original thesis, maintained that it would be only fair punishment if John Mayne were mulcted of his 'Logan Braes,' because of his cruel maltreatment of 'Helen of Kirkconnell.'
"Yes, I will say," he continued—and his fist was ready to come down on the table if needs were. "Robbie himself might well be proud of 'Logan Braes;' and John Mayne deserves to have something done to him for trying to spoil so fine a thing as 'Helen of Kirkconnell.' I cannot forgive that. I cannot forgive that at all. No excuse. Do ye think the man that wrote the 'Siller Gun' did not know he was making the fine old ballad into a fashionable rigmarole? Confound him, I would take 'Logan Braes' from him in a minute, if I could, and hand it over to Robbie——"
"Did you ever notice," interposed the editor of the Scotch paper, "the clever little trick of repetition in the middle of every alternate verse——