“I must not be disgracing my brother,” said she, and was very merry with it all, although her face told tales of her.

There is a garden in that city we were bound to, sanded below with clean sand, the trees meeting overhead, some of them trimmed, some pleached, and the whole place beautified with alleys and arbours.  Here I left Catriona, and went forward by myself to find my correspondent.  There I drew on my credit, and asked to be recommended to some decent, retired lodging.  My baggage not being yet arrived, I told him I supposed I should require his caution with the people of the house; and explained that, my sister being come for a while to keep house with me, I should be wanting two chambers.  This was all very well; but the trouble was that Mr. Balfour in his letter of recommendation had condescended on a great deal of particulars, and never a word of any sister in the case.  I could see my Dutchman was extremely suspicious; and viewing me over the rims of a great pair of spectacles—­he was a poor, frail body, and reminded me of an infirm rabbit—­he began to question me close.

Here I fell in a panic.  Suppose he accept my tale (thinks I), suppose he invite my sister to his house, and that I bring her.  I shall have a fine ravelled pirn to unwind, and may end by disgracing both the lassie and myself.  Thereupon I began hastily to expound to him my sister’s character.  She was of a bashful disposition, it appeared, and so extremely fearful of meeting strangers that I had left her at that moment sitting in a public place alone.  And then, being launched upon the stream of falsehood, I must do like all the rest of the world in the same circumstance, and plunge in deeper than was any service; adding some altogether needless particulars of Miss Balfour’s ill-health and retirement during childhood.  In the midst of which I awoke to a sense of my behaviour, and was turned to one blush.

The old gentleman was not so much deceived but what he discovered a willingness to be quit of me.  But he was first of all a man of business; and knowing that my money was good enough, however it might be with my conduct, he was so far obliging as to send his son to be my guide and caution in the matter of a lodging.  This implied my presenting of the young man to Catriona.  The poor, pretty child was much recovered with resting, looked and behaved to perfection, and took my arm and gave me the name of brother more easily than I could answer her.  But there was one misfortune:  thinking to help, she was rather towardly than otherwise to my Dutchman.  And I could not but reflect that Miss Balfour had rather suddenly outgrown her bashfulness.  And there was another thing, the difference of our speech.  I had the Low Country tongue and dwelled upon my words; she had a hill voice, spoke with something of an English accent, only far more delightful, and was scarce quite fit to be called a deacon in the craft of talking English grammar; so that, for a brother and sister, we made a most uneven pair.  But the young Hollander was a heavy dog, without so much spirit in his belly as to remark her prettiness, for which I scorned him.  And as soon as he had found a cover to our heads, he left us alone, which was the greater service of the two.