is,’ quo’ she.  ‘Jean!’ she cried wi’ a voice that made the house a’ dirl again.  ‘Comin’, mother,’ cried my flower o’ the forest; and in she cam’, skippin’ like a perfect fairy.  But when she saw me, she started as if she had seen an apparition, and coloured up to the very e’ebrows.  As for me, I trembled like an ash leaf, and stepped forward to meet her.  I dinna think she was sensible o’ me takin’ her by the hand; and I was just beginning to say again, ’I’ve taken the liberty,’ when the auld wife had the sense and discretion to leave us by our-sel’s.  I’m sure and certain I never experienced such a relief since I was born.  My head was absolutely ringing wi’ dizziness and love.  I made twa or three attempts to say something grand, but I never got half-a-dozen words out; and finding it a’ nonsense, I threw my arms around her waist, and pressed her beatin’ breast to mine, and stealing a hearty kiss, the whole story that I had made such a wark about was ower in a moment.  She made a wee bit fuss, and cried ‘Oh fie!’ and ‘Sir!’ or something o’ that kind; but I held her to my breast, declaring my intentions manfully—­that I had been dying for her for five years, and now that I was a gentleman, I thought I might venture to speak.  In fact, I held her in my arms until she next door to said ‘Yes!’

“Within a week we had a’thing settled.  I found out she had nae fortune.  Her mother belanged to a kind o’ auld family, that, like mony ithers, cam’ down the brae wi’ Prince Charles, poor fallow; and they were baith rank Episcopawlians.  I found the mither had just sae muckle a year frae some o’ her far-awa relations; and had it no been that they happened to ca’ me Stuart, and I tauld her a rigmarole about my grandfaither and Culloden, so that she soon made me out a pedigree, about which I kenned nae mair than the man o’ the moon, but keept saying ‘yes’ and ‘certainly’ to a’ she said—­I say, but for that, and confound me, if she wadna hae curled up her nose at me and my five thousand pounds into the bargain, though her lassie should hae starved.  But Jeannie was a perfect angel.  She was about two or three and thirty, wi’ light brown hair, hazel e’en, and a waist as jimp and sma’ as ye ever saw upon a human creature.  She dressed maist as plain as a Quakeress, but was a pattern o’ neatness.  Indeed, a blind man might seen she was a leddy born and bred; and then for sense, haud at ye there, I wad matched her against the minister and the kirk elders put thegither.  But she took that o’ her mither; o’ whom mair by-and-by.

“As I was saying, she was an Episcopawlian,—­a downright, open-day defender o’ Archbishop Laud and the bloody Claverhouse; and she wished to prove down through me the priority and supremacy o’ bishops ower presbyteries,—­just downright nonsense, ye ken; but there’s nae accounting for sooperstition.  A great deal depends on how a body’s brought up.  But what vexed me maist was to think that she wad be gaun to ae place o’ public worship on the Sabbath, and me to anither, just like twa strangers; and maybe if her minister preached half an hour langer than mine, or mine half an hour langer than hers, or when we had nae intermission, then there was the denner spoiled, and the servant no kenned what time to hae it ready; for the mistress said ane o’clock, and the maister said twa o’clock.  Now, I wadna gie tippence for a cauld denner.