‘Weel, Kittlestonheugh,’ replied Dirdumwhamle, ‘I’ll e’en mak it better than the twa hunder and fifty--I’ll make it whole three hunder, if ye’ll get a paction o’ consent and conneevance wi’ your auld son Charles, to pay to Miss Meg, or to the offspring o’ my marriage wi’ her, a yearly soom during his liferent in the property, you yoursel’ undertaking in your lifetime to be as good. I’m sure that’s baith fair and a very great liberality on my side.’ Claud received this proposal with a convulsive gurgle of the heart’s blood. It seemed to him, that, on every occasion, the wrong which he had done Charles was to be brought in the most offensive form before him, and he sat for the space of two or three minutes without making any reply; at last he said,-- ‘Mr. Milrookit, I ne’er rue’t any thing in my life but the consequence of twa-three het words that ance passed between me and my gudefather Plealands anent our properties; and I hae lived to repent my obduracy. For this cause I’ll say nae mair about an augmentation of the proposed jointure, but just get my dochter to put up wi’ the two hundred pounds, hoping that hereafter, an ye can mak it better, she’ll be none the waur of her father’s confidence in you on this occasion.’ Thus was Miss Meg disposed of, and thus did the act of injustice which was done to one child operate, through the mazy feelings of the father’s conscious spirit, to deter him, even in the midst of such sordid bargaining, not only from venturing to insist on his own terms, but even from entertaining a proposal which had for its object a much more liberal provision for his daughter than he had any reason, under all the circumstances, to expect. CHAPTER XXXIII Soon after the marriage of Miss Meg, George, the third son, and youngest of the family, was placed in the counting-house of one of the most eminent West Indian merchants at that period in Glasgow. This incident was in no other respect important in the history of the Lairds of Grippy, than as serving to open a career to George, that would lead him into a higher class of acquaintance than his elder brothers: for it was about this time that the general merchants of the royal city began to arrogate to themselves that aristocratic superiority over the shopkeepers, which they have since established into an oligarchy as proud and sacred, in what respects the reciprocities of society, as the famous Seignories of Venice and of Genoa.