‘Oh, yes,’ replied the worthy lawyer, delighted with so successful an issue to his voluntary mission; ‘ye hae twa ways o’ doing the business; either by getting Watty to agree to an aliment, or by making a bond of provision to Charles and Mrs. Milrookit.’ Claud said he would prefer the former mode; observing, with respect to the latter, that he thought it would be a cheating o’ the law to take the other course. ‘As for cheating the law,’ said the lawyer, ‘ye need gie yoursel no uneasiness about it, provided ye do honestly by your ain bairns, and the rest o’ the community.’ And it was in consequence agreed, that, in the course of a day or two, Claud should take Walter to Glasgow, to execute a deed, by which, in the event of surviving his father, he would undertake to pay a certain annuity for the behoof of Charles’s family, and that of his sister, Mrs. Milrookit. CHAPTER XXXIX In furtherance of the arrangement agreed upon, as we have described in the foregoing chapter, as soon as Mr. Keelevin had retired, Claud summoned Walter into the parlour. It happened, that the Leddy, during the period of the lawyer’s visit, had been so engaged in another part of the house, that she was not aware of the conference, till, by chance, she saw him riding down the avenue. We need not, therefore, say that she experienced some degree of alarm, at the idea of a lawyer having been with her husband, unknown to her; and particularly, when, so immediately after his departure, her darling was requested to attend his father. The mother and son entered the room together. Walter came from the nursery, where he had been dandling his child, and his appearance was not of the most prepossessing kind. From the death of his wife, in whose time, under her dictation, he was brushed up into something of a gentlemanly exterior, he had become gradually more and more slovenly. He only shaved on Saturday night, and buttoned his breeches knees on Sunday morning. Nor was the dress of Leddy Grippy at all out of keeping with that of her hopeful favourite. Her time-out-of-mind red quilted silk petticoat was broken into many holes;--her thrice dyed double tabinet gown, of bottle-green, with large ruffle cuffs, was in need of another dip; for, in her various culinary inspections, it had received many stains, and the superstructure of lawn and catgut, ornamented with ribbons, dyed blae in ink, surmounting her ill-toiletted toupee, had every appearance of having been smoked into yellow, beyond all power of blanching in the bleacher’s art. ‘And so, gudeman,’ said she, on entering the room, ‘ye hae had that auld sneck-drawer, Keelevin, wi’ you? I won’er what you and him can hae to say in sic a clandestine manner, that the door maun be ay steekit when ye’re thegither at your confabbles. Surely there’s nae honesty that a man can hae, whilk his wife ought na to come in for a share of.’ ‘Sit down, Girzy Hypel, and haud thy tongue,’ was the peevish command which this speech provoked.