cultivated; but her morals had been greatly neglected in her youth,
and she would waste her precious time in the long winter nights,
playing at the cards with her visitors; in the which thriftless and
sinful pastime, she was at great pains to instruct Kate Malcolm,
which I was grieved to understand. What, however, I most misliked
in her ladyship, was a lightness and juvenility of behaviour
altogether unbecoming her years; for she was far past three-score,
having been long married without children. Her son, the soldier
officer, came so late, that it was thought she would have been taken
up as an evidence in the Douglas cause. She was, to be sure,
crippled with the rheumatics, and no doubt the time hung heavy on
her hands; but the best friends of recreation and sport must allow,
that an old woman, sitting whole hours jingling with that paralytic
chattel a spinnet, was not a natural object! What, then, could be
said for her singing Italian songs, and getting all the newest from
Vauxhall in London, a boxful at a time, with new novel-books, and
trinkum-trankum flowers and feathers, and sweetmeats, sent to her by
a lady of the blood royal of Paris? As for the music, she was at
great pains to instruct Kate, which, with the other things she
taught, were sufficient, as my lady said herself, to qualify poor
Kate for a duchess or a governess, in either of which capacities,
her ladyship assured Mrs Malcolm, she would do honour to her
instructor, meaning her own self; but I must come to the point anent
the affair.

One evening, early in the month of January, as I was sitting by
myself in my closet studying the Scots Magazine, which I well
remember the new number had come but that very night, Mrs Balwhidder
being at the time busy with the lasses in the kitchen, and
superintending, as her custom was, for she was a clever woman, a