"Beg your pardon, sir, what they call love at first sight." He wore an ingenuous blush and an expression at once shy and insinuating. "The poets, Rowley, are on my side." "Mrs. McRankine, sir----" "The Queen of Navarre, Mr. Rowley----" But he so far forgot himself as to interrupt. "It took Mrs. McRankine years, sir, to get used to her first husband. She told me so." "It took us some days, if I remember, to get used to Mrs. McRankine. To be sure, her cooking----" "That's what I say, Mr. Anne: it's more than skin-deep: and you'll hardly believe me, sir--that is, if you didn't take note of it--but she hev got an ankle." He had produced the pieces of his flageolet, and was adjusting them nervously, with a face red as a turkey-cock's wattles. I regarded him with a new and incredulous amusement. That I served Mr. Rowley for a glass of fashion and a mould of form was of course no new discovery: and the traditions of body-service allow--nay, enjoin--that when the gentleman goes a-wooing, the valet shall take a sympathetic wound. What could be more natural than that a gentleman of sixteen should select a lady of fifty for his first essay in the tender passion? Still--Bethiah McRankine! I kept my countenance with an effort. "Mr. Rowley," said I, "if music be the food of love, play on." And Mr. Rowley gave "The Girl I left behind me," shyly at first, but anon with terrific expression. He broke off with a sigh. "Heigho!" in fact, said Rowley: and started off again while I tapped out the time, and hummed-- "But now I'm bound for Brighton camp, Kind Heaven then pray guide me, And send me safely back again To the girl I left behind me!" Thenceforward that not uninspiriting air became the _motif_ of our progress. We never tired of it. Whenever our conversation flagged, by tacit consent Mr. Rowley pieced his flageolet together and started it. The horses lilted it out in their gallop: the harness jingled, the postillions tittuped to it. And the _presto_ with which it wound up as we came to a post-house and a fresh relay of horses had to be heard to be believed. So with the chaise windows open to the vigorous airs of spring, and my own breast like a window flung wide to youth and health and happy expectations, I rattled homewards; impatient as a lover should be, yet not too impatient to taste the humour of spinning like a lord, with a pocketful of money, along the road which the _ci-devant_ M. Champdivers had so fearfully dodged and skirted in Burchell Fenn's covered cart. And yet so impatient that when we galloped over the Calton Hill and down into Edinburgh by the new London road, with the wind in our faces, and a sense of April in it, brisk and jolly, I must pack off Rowley to our lodgings with the valises, and stay only for a wash and breakfast at Dumbreck's before posting on to Swanston alone.