Miss Napier was the eldest of three maiden sisters who kept the
principal hostelry of Rothieden, called The Boar's Head; from which, as
Robert reached the square in the dusk, the mail-coach was moving away
with a fresh quaternion of horses. He found a good many boxes standing
upon the pavement close by the archway that led to the inn-yard,
and around them had gathered a group of loungers, not too cold to be
interested. These were looking towards the windows of the inn, where the
owner of the boxes had evidently disappeared.
'Saw ye ever sic a sicht in oor toon afore!' said Dooble Sanny, as
people generally called him, his name being Alexander Alexander,
pronounced, by those who chose to speak of him with the ordinary respect
due from one mortal to another, Sandy Elshender. Double Sandy was
a soutar, or shoemaker, remarkable for his love of sweet sounds and
whisky. He was, besides, the town-crier, who went about with a drum at
certain hours of the morning and evening, like a perambulating clock,
and also made public announcements of sales, losses, &c.; for the
rest--a fierce, fighting fellow when in anger or in drink, which latter
included the former.
'What's the sicht, Sandy?' asked Robert, coming up with his hands in the
pockets of his trowsers.
'Sic a sicht as ye never saw, man,' returned Sandy; 'the bonniest leddy
ever man set his ee upo'. I culd na hae thocht there had been sic a
woman i' this warl'.'
'Hoot, Sandy!' said Robert, 'a body wad think she was tint (lost) and ye
had the cryin' o' her. Speyk laicher, man; she'll maybe hear ye. Is she
i' the inn there?'
'Ay is she,' answered Sandy. 'See sic a warl' o' kists as she's brocht
wi' her,' he continued, pointing towards the pile of luggage. 'Saw ye
ever sic a bourach (heap)? It jist blecks (beats) me to think what ae
body can du wi' sae mony kists. For I mayna doobt but there's something
or ither in ilka ane o' them. Naebody wad carry aboot toom (empty) kists
wi' them. I cannot mak' it oot.'
The boxes might well surprise Sandy, if we may draw any conclusions
from the fact that the sole implement of personal adornment which he
possessed was two inches of a broken comb, for which he had to search
when he happened to want it, in the drawer of his stool, among awls,
lumps of rosin for his violin, masses of the same substance wrought into
shoemaker's wax for his ends, and packets of boar's bristles, commonly
called birse, for the same.
'Are thae a' ae body's?' asked Robert.
'Troth are they. They're a' hers, I wat. Ye wad hae thocht she had been
gaein' to The Bothie; but gin she had been that, there wad hae been a
cairriage to meet her,' said Crookit Caumill, the ostler.
The Bothie was the name facetiously given by Alexander, Baron Rothie,
son of the Marquis of Boarshead, to a house he had built in the
neighbourhood, chiefly for the accommodation of his bachelor friends
from London during the shooting-season.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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