“By which you will please understand that I am like the cock in the midden in the fable book,” said I.  “I see the braw jewel—­and I like fine to see it too—­but I have more need of the pickle corn.”

“Bravissimo!” she cried.  “There is a word well said at last, and I will reward you for it with my story.  That same night of your desertion I came late from a friend’s house—­where I was excessively admired, whatever you may think of it—­and what should I hear but that a lass in a tartan screen desired to speak with me?  She had been there an hour or better, said the servant-lass, and she grat in to herself as she sat waiting.  I went to her direct; she rose as I came in, and I knew her at a look. ‘Grey Eyes!’ says I to myself, but was more wise than to let on. You will be Miss Grant at last? she says, rising and looking at me hard and pitiful. Ay, it was true he said, you are bonny at all events.—­The way God made me, my dear, I said, but I would be gey and obliged if ye could tell me what brought you here at such a time of the night—­Lady, she said, we are kinsfolk, we are both come of the blood of the sons of Alpin.—­My dear, I replied, I think no more of Alpin or his sons than what I do of a kale-stock.  You have a better argument in these tears upon your bonny face.  And at that I was so weakminded as to kiss her, which is what you would like to do dearly, and I wager will never find the courage of.  I say it was weakminded of me, for I knew no more of her than the outside; but it was the wisest stroke I could have hit upon.  She is a very staunch, brave nature, but I think she has been little used with tenderness; and at that caress (though to say the truth, it was but lightly given) her heart went out to me.  I will never betray the secrets of my sex, Mr. Davie; I will never tell you the way she turned me round her thumb, because it is the same she will use to twist yourself.  Ay, it is a fine lass!  She is as clean as hill well water.”

“She is e’en’t!” I cried.

“Well, then, she told me her concerns,” pursued Miss Grant, “and in what a swither she was in about her papa, and what a taking about yourself, with very little cause, and in what a perplexity she had found herself after you was gone away. And then I minded at long last, says she, that we were kinswomen, and that Mr. David should have given you the name of the bonniest of the bonny, and I was thinking to myself ’If she is so bonny she will be good at all events; and I took up my foot soles out of that.  That was when I forgave yourself, Mr. Davie.  When you was in my society, you seemed upon hot iron; by all marks, if ever I saw a young man that wanted to be gone, it was yourself, and I and my two sisters were the ladies you were so desirous to be gone from; and now it appeared you had given me some notice in the bygoing, and was so kind as to comment on my attractions!  From that hour you may date our friendship, and I began to think with tenderness upon the Latin grammar.”