But Mrs. Macleuchar, the proprietress of the Queensferry diligence, was in no hurry to face the wrath of the public. She served her customer quietly in the shop below, ascended the stairs, and when at last on the level of the street, she looked about, wiped her spectacles as if a mote upon them might have caused her to overlook so minute an object as an omnibus, and exclaimed, "Did ever anybody see the like o' this?" "Yes, you abominable woman," cried the traveller, "many have seen the like before, and all will yet see the like again, that have aught to do with your trolloping sex!" And walking up and down the pavement in front of Mrs. Macleuchar's booth, he delivered a volley of abuse each time he came in front of it, much as a battleship fires a broadside as she passes a hostile fortress, till the good woman was quite overwhelmed. "Oh! man! man!" she cried, "take back your three shillings and make me quit o' ye!" "Not so fast--not so fast," her enemy went on; "will three shillings take me to Queensferry according to your deceitful programme? Or will it pay my charges there, if, by your fault, I should be compelled to tarry there a day for want of tide? Will it even hire me a pinnace, for which the regular price is five shillings?" But at that very moment the carriage lumbered up, and the two travellers were carried off, the elder of them still leaning out of the window and shouting reproaches at the erring Mrs. Macleuchar. The slow pace of the broken-down horses, and the need to replace a shoe at a wayside smithy, still further delayed the progress of the vehicle, and when they arrived at Queensferry, the elder traveller, Mr. Jonathan Oldbuck by name, saw at once, by the expanse of wet sand and the number of the black glistening rocks visible along the shore, that the time of tide was long past. But he was less angry than his young companion, Mr. Lovel, had been led to expect from the scolding he had bestowed upon Mrs. Macleuchar in the city. On the way the two had discovered a kindred taste for antique literature and the remains of the past, upon which last Mr. Jonathan Oldbuck was willing to discourse, as the saying is, till all was blue. The Hawes Inn sat (and still sits) close by the wash of the tides which scour the Firth of Forth on its southern side. It was then an old-fashioned hostelry, overgrown on one side with ivy, and with the woods of Barnbogle growing close down behind it. The host was very willing to provide dinner and shelter for the two guests, and, indeed, there was a suspicion that Mr. Mackitchinson of the Hawes was in league with Mrs. Macleuchar of the Tron, and that this fact went far to explain the frequent late appearance of the coach with "the three yellow wheels and a black one" belonging to that lady, upon the High Street of Edinburgh.