Another lady directress was the Countess of Panmure. A brewer’s daughter had come very well dressed, but here fine feathers did not make a fine bird. Her Ladyship sent her a message not to come again, as she was not entitled to attend the assemblies. Her justice was even-handed. She noted her nephew, the Earl of Cassillis, did not seem altogether right one evening. “You have sat too late after dinner to be proper company for ladies,” quoth she; she then led him to the door, and calling out, “My Lord Cassillis’s chair!” wished him “good-night.” Perhaps my Lord betook himself to the neighbouring Covenant Close, where there was a famed oyster-seller commemorated by Scott, who knew its merits. Was it on this account or because the Covenant had lain for signature there that Sir Walter made it the abode of Nanty Ewart when he studied divinity at Edinburgh with disastrous results? Unfortunate Covenant Close! The last time I peered through a locked gate on its grimy ways I found it used for the brooms and barrows of the city scavengers. But to resume. The dancing in the Assembly Room was hedged about with various rites that made it a solemn function. When a lady was assigned to a gallant he needs must present her with an orange. To “lift the lady” meant to ask her to dance. The word was not altogether fortunate; it is the technical term still used in the north to signify that the corpse has begun its procession from the house to the grave. “It’s lifted,” whispers the undertaker’s man to the mourners, as he beckons them to follow. Another quaint custom was to “save the ladies” by drinking vast quantities of hot punch to their health or in their honour. If they were not thus “saved” they were said to be “damned.” There are as racy stories of folk not so well known, and not so exalted. Mrs. Dundas lived on Bunker’s Hill (hard by where the Register House now stands). One of her daughters read from a newspaper to her as to some lady whose reputation was damaged by the indiscreet talk of the Prince of Wales. “Oh,” said old fourscore with an indignant shake of her shrivelled fist and a tone of cutting contempt, “the dawmed villain! Does he kiss and tell?” This is quaint enough. Miss Mamie Trotter, of the Mortonhall family, dreamt she was in heaven, and describes her far from edifying experience. “And what d’ye think I saw there? De’il ha’it but thousands upon thousands, and ten thousands upon ten thousands o’ stark naked weans! That wad be a dreadfu’ thing, for ye ken I ne’er could bide bairns a’ my days!” [Illustration: CAROLINE, BARONESS NAIRNE, From a Lithograph] “Come away, Bailie, and take a trick at the cairds,” Mrs. Telfer of St. John Street, Canongate, and sister of Smollett, would exclaim to a worthy magistrate and tallow chandler who paid her an evening visit. “Troth, madam, I hae nae siller.” “Then let us play for a p’und of can’le,” rejoined the gamesome Telfer.