Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/174

170 daughter, too, had her own thoughts: she appeared to employ herself with the intricacies of a skein of thread; but contrived at every motion of her hand to steal a glance at me from beneath a thick mass of natural curls which rivalled in density, and nearly in colour, the fairest fleece of any of her father's flock. Her hand, too, unwittingly paused in its work, and shed back the curls from her ears that she might hear more accurately my ideas of fireside economy and joy. The old man alone seemed slow in entering into the prospect of wedding his daughter's visible wealth to one whose chief substance was speculative. He sat solacing his thoughts with a scheme which had no connection with my happiness. I saw something sinister in his looks; I heard him utter many a dry and dubious cough as his wife urged his admission of me as a suitor, and perceived, like the half hope of bliss held out by the Puritans, that I might be elected, but should never be chosen.

"At this moment the latch of the door was lifted, and a human figure tottered in, leaning twofold over a staff polished like glass with long use. It was a neighbouring moorland farmer, and a suitor to the maiden. He was dressed, or rather encumbered with clothes, which, in the shape of two coats, a large one and a less, showed the antique skill of cloth-cutting at the time of the Scottish persecution. Over all these a large plaid extended, and a bonnet that nearly overshaded the plaid crowned the whole. He removed this last-mentioned article, and displayed a face as sharp and biting as a northern frost, and a couple of small, keen, and inquisitive grey eyes, which seemed only acquainted with arithmetical calculation. He smoothed back his locks, which seemed to have long rebelled against the comb, and, casting his eyes over us, said with a prefatory cough:

Hale be thy heart, goodman, and happy be thine, goodwife, and merry may thine be, Penney, my winsome quean, mair by token I have sold seven score of dinmans, every cloot, and all to buy thee a bridal garment, lass, and a horse to ride on to the kirking, the fellow of whilk ye'll no find from Annan to Nith. But who, in the name of all that's holy, can this strange tyke be?' said this venerable gallant, casting a look of no great delight on me; 'his dress would scare the sheep, so he can be no shepherd; and he seems to lack wit to watch the hooded crows from his flock, so he