“I never saw you so well adorned,” said I. “O Davie man, dinna be a pompous gowk!” said she, and was more than usually sharp to me the remainder of the day. About candlelight we came home from this excursion. For a good while I heard nothing further of Catriona—my Miss Grant remaining quite impenetrable, and stopping my mouth with pleasantries. At last, one day that she returned from walking and found me alone in the parlour over my French, I thought there was something unusual in her looks; the colour heightened, the eyes sparkling high, and a bit of a smile continually bitten in as she regarded me. She seemed indeed like the very spirit of mischief, and, walking briskly in the room, had soon involved me in a kind of quarrel over nothing and (at the least) with nothing intended on my side. I was like Christian in the slough—the more I tried to clamber out upon the side, the deeper I became involved; until at last I heard her declare, with a great deal of passion, that she would take that answer from the hands of none, and I must down upon my knees for pardon. The causelessness of all this fuff stirred my own bile. “I have said nothing you can properly object to,” said I, “and as for my knees, that is an attitude I keep for God.” “And as a goddess I am to be served!” she cried, shaking her brown locks at me and with a bright colour. “Every man that comes within waft of my petticoats shall use me so!” “I will go so far as ask your pardon for the fashion’s sake, although I vow I know not why,” I replied. “But for these play-acting postures, you can go to others.” “O Davie!” she said. “Not if I was to beg you?” I bethought me I was fighting with a woman, which is the same as to say a child, and that upon a point entirely formal. “I think it a bairnly thing,” I said, “not worthy in you to ask, or me to render. Yet I will not refuse you, neither,” said I; “and the stain, if there be any, rests with yourself.” And at that I kneeled fairly down. “There!” she cried. “There is the proper station, there is where I have been manoeuvring to bring you.” And then, suddenly, “Kep,” [21] said she, flung me a folded billet, and ran from the apartment laughing. The billet had neither place nor date. “Dear Mr. David,” it began, “I get your news continually by my cousin, Miss Grant, and it is a pleisand hearing. I am very well, in a good place, among good folk, but necessitated to be quite private, though I am hoping that at long last we may meet again. All your friendships have been told me by my loving cousin, who loves us both. She bids me to send you this writing, and oversees the same. I will be asking you to do all her commands, and rest your affectionate friend, Catriona Macgregor-Drummond. P.S.—Will you not see my cousin, Allardyce?”