Page:Important passages in the life of Mansie Wauch, tailor in Dalkeith.pdf/14

14 and up goes the green curtain, being hauled to tbe ceiling, as I observed wi' the tail o' my ee, by a birkie at the side that had haud o' a rope. So, on the music stopping and all becoming as still as that you might have heard a pin fall, in comes a decent old gentleman, at his leasure, well powered, wi' an auld-fashioned coat and, waistcoat wi' flap pockets, brown breeches, with buckles at the knees, and silk stockings, with red gushets on a blue ground. I never saw a man in sic distress; he stampit about, and better stampit about, dadding the end of his staff on the ground, and imploring all the powers of heaven and yearth to help him to find out his run-awa' daughter, that had decampit wi' some neerdowell loon of a half-pay captain, that keppit her in his arms frae her bed-room window, up twa pair o' stairs. Every father and head of a family maun hae felt for a man in his situation, thus to he rubbit of his dear bairn, and an only daughter too, as he tell'us ower and ower again, as the saut saut tears ran gushing down his withered face, and he aye blew his nose on his clean callendered pocket napkin. But, ye ken, the thing was absurd to suppose, that we should ken ony thing about the matter, having never seen either him or his daughter between the een afore, and no kenning them by head mark; so, though we sympathised with him, as folks ought to do with a fellow-creature in affliction, we thought it best to haud our tongues, to see what might cast up better than he expected. So out he gaed stumping at the ither side, determined, he said, to find them out, though he should follow them to the world's end, Johnny Groat's House, or something to that effect.

Hardly was his back turned, and amaist before ye could cry Jack Robison, in comes the birkie and the very young leddy theauld gentleman described, arm and arm thegether, smoodging and lauching