half-a-dozen words out; and finding it a' nonsense, I threw my arms
around her waist, and pressed her beatin' breast to mine, and stealing a
hearty kiss, the whole story that I had made such a wark about was ower
in a moment. She made a wee bit fuss, and cried 'Oh fie!' and 'Sir!' or
something o' that kind; but I held her to my breast, declaring my
intentions manfully--that I had been dying for her for five years, and
now that I was a gentleman, I thought I might venture to speak. In fact,
I held her in my arms until she next door to said 'Yes!'

"Within a week we had a'thing settled. I found out she had nae fortune.
Her mother belanged to a kind o' auld family, that, like mony ithers,
cam' down the brae wi' Prince Charles, poor fallow; and they were baith
rank Episcopawlians. I found the mither had just sae muckle a year frae
some o' her far-awa relations; and had it no been that they happened to
ca' me Stuart, and I tauld her a rigmarole about my grandfaither and
Culloden, so that she soon made me out a pedigree, about which I kenned
nae mair than the man o' the moon, but keept saying 'yes' and
'certainly' to a' she said--I say, but for that, and confound me, if she
wadna hae curled up her nose at me and my five thousand pounds into the
bargain, though her lassie should hae starved. But Jeannie was a perfect
angel. She was about two or three and thirty, wi' light brown hair,
hazel e'en, and a waist as jimp and sma' as ye ever saw upon a human
creature. She dressed maist as plain as a Quakeress, but was a pattern
o' neatness. Indeed, a blind man might seen she was a leddy born and
bred; and then for sense, haud at ye there, I wad matched her against
the minister and the kirk elders put thegither. But she took that o' her
mither; o' whom mair by-and-by.

"As I was saying, she was an Episcopawlian,--a downright, open-day
defender o' Archbishop Laud and the bloody Claverhouse; and she wished