"Yes, father, and I hope that the luck in store will belie the prophecy of my old foster-mother, Elsie Irvine, at the Coves, who used to allege, that when I _first_ left your room, mother, a puling and new-born brat, I was carried _down_ a stair instead of up, a certain token that I should never rise in the world. I have often made the Prince Regent, Paget, and other fellows laugh at that story; yet I have always had a fair run of success in everything I undertake." "Which should make you in future avoid all affairs at Chalk Farm, and so forth; you have had three men out there in three years, Cosmo." "And winged them all. My dear lord, don't talk. Some small sword affairs of yours, when Leicester fields was the fashionable place, are still remembered in London." "Yes--I ran two friends of Mr. Wilkes fairly through the body there one morning, for permitting themselves to indulge in national reflections, and would do so again if the same cause were given me: but, zounds! what else could we do in those days of the 'North Briton?' By-the-bye, is this new movement about the stuff called gas spreading in London?" "Yes; I wish you had been there on the 28th of January, 1807, and seen Pall-Mall actually lighted with it--by a man named Winsor, the Cockney call him a mad man for thinking of such a scheme!" "Did you pass through Edinburgh?" "I was obliged to do so, my lord, unfortunately." "Did you make any stay there?" "Stay! I should think not--only long enough to dine with some jolly fellows of the Cinque Ports Dragoons, at the new barrack, built some fifteen years ago at Piershill--" "Once Colonel Piers' place--Piers, of the old Scotch 17th--Aberdour's Light Dragoons." "Exactly, and then to get a relay of post-horses at Ramsay's stables. But as for staying in Edinburgh, egad! it would be intolerable to me, with its would-be dandies and its freckled women, whose faces have that sweet expression imparted by the soothing influences of Presbyterianism and the east wind; and then its one street, or only half a street to promenade in, who the devil would stay there that could stay out of it? Why, not even the rhyming ganger who hailed it as 'Edina, Scotia's darling seat.'" As his son concluded with a loud laugh, Lord Rohallion shook his powdered head, for he could not endorse this unpatriotic depreciation of the Scottish metropolis, and poor Lady Winifred sighed as she glanced at a black silhouette by Miers, presented to her by the bard of Coila, with a copy of his verses in her honour; and then remembering the fancied glories of the Old Assembly Close, as she and her friend, Lady Eglinton, had seen them in their girlhood, she said: "In my time, Cosmo, Edinburgh was wont to be gay enough." "A sad gaiety. Thank God, mother, the Guards can never be quartered in so dull a provincial town." "Its dulness is the effect of the Union, which removed court, council, parliament, revenue, and everything," said Lord Rohallion.