Such a woman, it may be supposed, could not but look with the most thorough contempt on Walter Walkinshaw; and yet, from the accidental circumstance of being often his playmate in childhood, and making him, in the frolic of their juvenile amusements, her butt and toy, she had contracted something like an habitual affection for the creature; in so much, that, when her father, after Claud’s visit, proposed Walter for her husband, she made no serious objection to the match; on the contrary, she laughed, and amused herself with the idea of making him fetch and carry as whimsically as of old, and do her hests and biddings as implicitly as when they were children. Every thing thus seemed auspicious to a speedy and happy union of the properties of Kilmarkeckle and Grippy,--indeed, so far beyond the most sanguine expectations of Claud, that, when he saw the philosophical Laird coming next morning, with a canister of snuff in his hand, to tell him the result of his communication to Miss Betty, his mind was prepared to hear a most decided, and even a menacing refusal, for having ventured to make the proposal. ‘Come away, Kilmarkeckle,’ said he, meeting him at the door; ‘come in by--what’s the best o’ your news this morning? I hope nothing’s wrang at hame, to gar you look sae as ye were fasht?’ ‘Troth,’ replied Kilmarkeckle, ‘I hae got a thing this morning that’s very vexatious. Last year, at Beltane, ye should ken, I coft frae Donald M’Sneeshen, the tobacconist aboon the Cross of Glasgow, a canister of a kind that I ca’d the Linty. It was sae brisk in the smeddum, so pleasant to the smell, garring ye trow in the sniffling that ye were sitting on a bonny green knowe in hay time, by the side of a blooming whin-bush, hearkening to the blithe wee birdies singing sangs, as it were, to pleasure the summer’s sun; and what would ye think, Mr. Walkinshaw, here is another canister of a sort that I’ll defy ony ordinary nose to tell the difference, and yet, for the life o’ me, I canna gie’t in conscience anither name than the Hippopotamus.’ ‘But hae ye spoken to your dochter?’ said Grippy, interrupting him, and apprehensive of a dissertation. ‘O aye, atweel I hae done that.’ ‘And what did Miss Betty say?’ ‘Na, an ye had but seen and heard her, ye would just hae dee’t, Mr. Walkinshaw. I’m sure I wonder wha the lassie taks her light-hearted merriment frae, for her mother was a sober and sedate sensible woman; I never heard her jocose but ance, in a’ the time we were thegither, and that was when I expounded to her how Maccaba is like a nightingale, the whilk, as I hae seen and read in print, is a feathert fowl that has a great notion o’ roses.’ ‘I was fear’t for that,’ rejoined Claud, suspecting that Miss Betty had ridiculed the proposal.