Indeed, his whole appearance was then wonderfully second-hand.  Now he had cast his slough.  A most undeniable taglioni, with trimmings just bordering upon frogs, gave dignity to his demeanour and twofold amplitude to his chest.  The horn eye-glass was exchanged for one of purest gold, the dingy high-lows for well-waxed Wellingtons, the Paisley fogle for the fabric of the China loom.  Moreover, he walked with a swagger, and affected in common conversation a peculiar dialect which he opined to be the purest English, but which no one—­except a bagman—­could be reasonably expected to understand.  His pockets were invariably crammed with sharelists; and he quoted, if he did not comprehend, the money article from the “Times.”  This sort of assumption, though very ludicrous in itself, goes down wonderfully.  Bob gradually became a sort of authority, and his opinions got quoted on ’Change.  He was no ass, notwithstanding his peculiarities, and made good use of his opportunity.

For myself, I bore my new dignities with an air of modest meekness.  A certain degree of starchness is indispensable for a railway director, if he means to go forward in his high calling and prosper; he must abandon all juvenile eccentricities, and aim at the appearance of a decided enemy to free trade in the article of Wild Oats.  Accordingly, as the first step toward respectability, I eschewed coloured waistcoats and gave out that I was a marrying man.  No man under forty, unless he is a positive idiot, will stand forth as a theoretical bachelor.  It is all nonsense to say that there is anything unpleasant in being courted.  Attention, whether from male or female, tickles the vanity; and although I have a reasonable, and, I hope, not unwholesome regard for the gratification of my other appetites, I confess that this same vanity is by far the most poignant of the whole.  I therefore surrendered myself freely to the soft allurements thrown in my way by such matronly denizens of Glasgow as were possessed of stock in the shape of marriageable daughters; and walked the more readily into their toils because every party, though nominally for the purposes of tea, wound up with a hot supper, and something hotter still by way of assisting the digestion.

I don’t know whether it was my determined conduct at the allocation, my territorial title, or a most exaggerated idea of my circumstances, that worked upon the mind of Mr. Sawley.  Possibly it was a combination of the three; but, sure enough few days had elapsed before I received a formal card of invitation to a tea and serous conversation.  Now serious conversation is a sort of thing that I never shone in, possibly because my early studies were framed in a different direction; but as I really was unwilling to offend the respectable coffin-maker, and as I found that the Captain of M’Alcohol—­a decided trump in his way—­had also received a summons, I notified my acceptance.

M’Alcohol and I went together.  The captain, an enormous brawny Celt, with superhuman whiskers and a shock of the fieriest hair, had figged himself out, more majorum, in the full Highland costume.  I never saw Rob Roy on the stage look half so dignified or ferocious.  He glittered from head to foot with dirk, pistol, and skean-dhu; and at least a hundredweight of cairngorms cast a prismatic glory around his person.  I felt quite abashed beside him.