After another pause he proceeded thus:--"Bonny devartion truly! bonny devartion! Nay, nay, Betsy, thoo's worthy to be sum'ot bether nor that, my barne! If thoo sould niver be a gintleman's woife, thoo may be a farmer's woife, and ha' plenty and decency roond thee aw thee days, and bonny bairns, like what thoo was thee sell, aboot thee. And when I's tired wee killing swine," he added, pleased with the picture he had drawn, "I can coome to thee chimney corner, and tack the wee things on my knee, and gee thee good-man sum'ot be the week for my leeving. I think I sould like that bether, after aw Betsy, nor yon gentleman hunting!" "A weel, fayther," said Betsy, affected, "and I'll dee whativer thoo wilt. Bit Mr. Henry's a nice enough lad, tee--a! and civiler grown nor he used to be." "Weel, weel, lass! Bit tack care o' thee sell: the civiler the war, may be." That evening Henry brought one of his suppers to be cooked; and, among other good things, a jar of smuggled spirits, a delicacy which he had latterly contrived, by some secret means, to add to his feasts. On this occasion he seemed already to have taken himself a foretaste of the potent beverage. He found Betsy unusually distant. He kept following her about and deranging all her culinary proceedings, in the hope of provoking a game of romps. At last he got her up into a corner and kept teasing her, and coming up so close that it was impossible to get by without a struggle, which was just what he wanted. At this moment her father came in. "Kep off the lass!" he cried; "kep off the lass!" And, pushing Henry roughly aside, he stood between him and his daughter. "I tell you what, Mr. Henry St. Aubin," he said, "I been't a gintleman, to be sure; bit she is my flesh and blood for au' that, and the best gintleman in the land shan't coome nigh hand her, withoot he gangs to church wee her first! She's a fine lass, and a bonny lass, and a good lass; and worthy till be an honest man's wife, and the mother o' bonny bairns; and she sha'n't be sport for scholar lads, as long as her fayther has twa hands tle knock him doon that mislests her!" Henry laughed coarsely, and muttered some reply which did not seem to coincide exactly with David's notions of delicacy; for he continued thus: "Hoo durst yee tle spack in that undecent fashion afoor the lass? And what for do you look at her e that gate?" Henry, whose usually slender stock of good manners had not received much addition from his late intercourse with the spirit jar, was getting provoked. He could think, at the moment, of no readier mode of venting his anger than that which the immediate power of insulting offered. He seized Betsy, therefore, in pretended jest, and began to pull her about rudely, in open defiance of David and decency. The father's ire, at this, so got the better of him, that he forgot all his speculations.