Nevertheless I heard of Lorna, from my worthy furrier, almost every day, and with a fine exaggeration.  This honest man was one of those who in virtue of their trade, and nicety of behaviour, are admitted into noble life, to take measurements, and show patterns.  And while so doing, they contrive to acquire what is to the English mind at once the most important and most interesting of all knowledge,—­the science of being able to talk about the titled people.  So my furrier (whose name was Ramsack), having to make robes for peers, and cloaks for their wives and otherwise, knew the great folk, sham or real, as well as he knew a fox or skunk from a wolverine skin.

And when, with some fencing and foils of inquiry, I hinted about Lady Lorna Dugal, the old man’s face became so pleasant that I knew her birth must be wondrous high.  At this my own countenance fell, I suppose,—­for the better she was born, the harder she would be to marry—­and mistaking my object, he took me up:—­

“Perhaps you think, Master Ridd, that because her ladyship, Lady Lorna Dugal, is of Scottish origin, therefore her birth is not as high as of our English nobility.  If you think so you are wrong, sir.  She comes not of the sandy Scotch race, with high cheek-bones, and raw shoulder-blades, who set up pillars in their courtyards.  But she comes of the very best Scotch blood, descended from the Norsemen.  Her mother was of the very noblest race, the Lords of Lorne; higher even than the great Argyle, who has lately made a sad mistake, and paid for it most sadly.  And her father was descended from the King Dugal, who fought against Alexander the Great.  No, no, Master Ridd; none of your promiscuous blood, such as runs in the veins of half our modern peerage.”

“Why should you trouble yourself about it, Master Ramsack?” I replied:  “let them all go their own ways:  and let us all look up to them, whether they come by hook or crook.”

“Not at all, not at all, my lad.  That is not the way to regard it.  We look up at the well-born men, and side-ways at the base-born.”

“Then we are all base-born ourselves.  I will look up to no man, except for what himself has done.”

“Come, Master Ridd, you might be lashed from Newgate to Tyburn and back again, once a week, for a twelvemonth, if some people heard you.  Keep your tongue more close, young man; or here you lodge no longer; albeit I love your company, which smells to me of the hayfield.  Ah, I have not seen a hayfield for nine-and-twenty years, John Ridd.  The cursed moths keep me at home, every day of the summer.”

“Spread your furs on the haycocks,” I answered very boldly:  “the indoor moth cannot abide the presence of the outdoor ones.”

“Is it so?” he answered:  “I never thought of that before.  And yet I have known such strange things happen in the way of fur, that I can well believe it.  If you only knew, John, the way in which they lay their eggs, and how they work tail-foremost—­”