"I am new come from Edinburgh myself," he said, after presenting his friend, whom he named Mr. Hamilton. "It's a braw town. Have ye lived there long?" he asked. "Some years," Nancy answered; "although I was not born there." "There are fine country places all about it, too," he continued, "out the Pentland way." "Yes," she answered; "I've seen them." "And do you know many people in the city? I've met in with some notable folk on my sojourn there. The Monboddos, the Glencairns, and the Gordons are grand people." "I've heard their names," Nancy returned, in a non-committal way. "They've been kind to me," he went on, with a bit of conceit in his manner, "most kind. The ladies especially," he added. "So?" said Nancy. "That must be very comforting to you," she added, with a twinkle in her eye. "It is," was the unexpected answer, given with a droll look. "And I like to hear them sing my songs. Have ye heard Bonnie Dundee? It's not printed yet." "No," she answered, "but I could catch it. I sing a little. Could ye sooth it to me, Mr. Burns?" "Nay, nay," said Janet, "no music or singing yet; not till Mr. Burns has given us something of his own. We'll have Dickenson brew us a bowl of lemon punch, and we'll draw the curtains and gather the fire, and Mr. Burns will line us the Cotter's Saturday Night, the sensiblest thing writ for a long time, before ye sing us a song, my dear." And the old lady being set, there was nothing to do but to abide her way of it; and thus by the fire, with the elements raising a din outside, the five of them listened to the great man, who was not too great, however, to turn the whole battery of his compelling personality upon Nancy Stair, nor to look at her from the uplifted region in which he dwelt during the recital to see what effect he had upon her, for he had already learned "his power over ladies of quality." God knows if any of those, even Burns himself, who were gathered about the fire that night dreamed that, as I believe now, those lines would echo down the ages, nor that the time was coming when that evening might be a thing to boast upon and hand the memory of to children and to children's children as a precious heirloom: "November chill blaws loud wi' angry sugh: The shortening winter-day is at its close; The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh, The black'ning trains o'craws to their repose:----" And at the end, fed perhaps by the adulation of their faces, as well as their spoken words, he laid some open flattery to himself upon the way he'd been received in town and at the noise his name was making there at the time, and stirred Nancy's sense of humor, which, Heaven is a witness, needed little to move it at any time. "A'weel, a'weel," she said at length, "I make verses myself, Mr. Burns." "Say you so!" he cried; "and that's a surprise to me! Would you word us one of your poems?" he asked, laughingly. "I sing mine," she says, going over to the spinet.