Ladies of this class had a quiet mode of expressing themselves on very serious subjects, which indicated their quaint power of description, rather than their want of feeling.  Thus, of two sisters, when one had died, it was supposed that she had injured herself by an imprudent indulgence in strawberries and cream, of which she had partaken in the country.  A friend was condoling with the surviving sister, and, expressing her sorrow, had added, “I had hoped your sister was to live many years.”  To which her relative replied—­“Leeve! hoo could she leeve? she juist felled[58] hersell at Craigo wi’ straeberries and ’ream!” However, she spoke with the same degree of coolness of her own decease.  For when her friend was comforting her in illness, by the hopes that she would, after winter, enjoy again some of their country spring butter, she exclaimed, without the slightest idea of being guilty of any irreverence, “Spring butter! by that time I shall be buttering in heaven.”  When really dying, and when friends were round her bed she overheard one of them saying to another, “Her face has lost its colour; it grows like a sheet of paper.”  The quaint spirit even then broke out in the remark, “Then I’m sure it maun be broon paper.”  A very strong-minded lady of the class, and, in Lord Cockburn’s language, “indifferent about modes and habits[59],” had been asking from a lady the character of a cook she was about to hire.  The lady naturally entered a little upon her moral qualifications, and described her as a very decent woman; the response to which was, “Oh, d—­n her decency; can she make good collops?”—­an answer which would somewhat surprise a lady of Moray Place now, if engaged in a similar discussion of a servant’s merits.

The Rev. Dr. Cook of Haddington supplies an excellent anecdote, of which the point is in the dry Scottish answer:  An old lady of the Doctor’s acquaintance, about seventy, sent for her medical attendant to consult him about a sore throat, which had troubled her for some days.  Her medical man was ushered into her room, decked out with the now prevailing fashion, a mustache and flowing beard.  The old lady, after exchanging the usual civilities, described her complaint to the worthy son of AEsculapius.  “Well,” says he, “do you know, Mrs. Macfarlane, I used to be much affected with the very same kind of sore throat, but ever since I allowed my mustache and beard to grow, I have never been troubled with it.”  “Aweel, aweel,” said the old lady drily, “that may be the case, but ye maun prescribe some other method for me to get quit o’ the sair throat; for ye ken, doctor, I canna adopt that cure.”

Then how quaint the answer of old Mrs. Robison, widow of the eminent professor of natural philosophy, and who entertained an inveterate dislike to everything which she thought savoured of cant.  She had invited a gentleman to dinner on a particular day, and he had accepted, with the reservation, “If I am spared.”—­“Weel, weel,” said Mrs. Robison; “if ye’re deed, I’ll no expect ye.”