Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/277

Rh ye'll find ane of yere grandmother's treasured by among my bonds; for I loved my ain mother better than ever I loved gold; ye'll hardly credit that, Bessie; and I love thee, too, my ain sweet sister's wean."

He laid his arms around her neck, looked full in her face, with a kind and a glistening eye, and the demon of lucre spread his wings, to forsake the mansion where he had lived so long. But it was otherwise ordered. The poor weeping girl knelt over him, and wiped away from his face the tears which flowed from her own eyes, for tears never flowed from his, and hid her face in his bosom with many a bitter sob.

"Ah, ye waster hussey!" exclaimed the laird, in a tone above his strength, "wherefore wipe ye my face with a damask napkin, when a cloth three threads to the pound is too good for a wadset about to be redeemed like me? And see, as I hope to be saved, if ye are not consuming the good dry wood which I kept for the cozie winter night; ground-elding (dried turf) is good enough to warm such an old sapless bough as me, which the feller's axe is fast lopping away from the green tree of existence."

This appearance of unwonted profusion smote sore on the heart of the parsimonious old man, and in a tone of rebuke and bitterness he continued his discourse. "I may waste my breath—and I ought to leave some for a scrap of prayer, it may help me where I am going; I may waste my breath, Bess, I say, in counselling ye how to choose a husband. When a woman's eye is bright, her ear is deaf. Take not a man, Bess, who counts kindred four generations back; he'll call his ancestor a gentleman, and spill the brimming cup of thy fortune in justifying his descent. Nor yet marry a man who scorns his ancestors; the man who mocks his forefathers, tramples on their dust. I hold a father's fair name equal with hoarded siller. Above all things wed not a lawyer, lass; ye should aye strive to mend your fortune and better your fame. Think not of a sailor, for he thinks there is no Sunday in five fathoms of water, and finds a love in every land. Shun too the soldier, for shining scarlet, golden shoulder-knots, and a hat filled with fowls' feathers, will consume thy gold, and fly away with thy happiness; and, oh, what a gowk he maun be, who stands up to be shot at for saxpence a day, Sunday included! But marry, lass, for all women love to be married, were it only for the sake of having somebody to scold at, and to bear the fault for their