there was a visible increase of worldly circumstances, and the
hedges which had been planted along the toll-road, began to put
forth their branches, and to give new notions of orderlyness and
beauty to the farmers. Mrs Malcolm heard from time to time from her
son Charles, on board the man-of-war the Avenger, where he was
midshipman; and he had found a friend in the captain, that was just
a father to him. Her second son, Robert, being out of his time at
Irville, went to the Clyde to look for a berth, and was hired to go
to Jamaica, in a ship called the Trooper. He was a lad of greater
sobriety of nature than Charles; douce, honest, and faithful; and
when he came home, though he brought no limes to me to make punch,
like his brother, he brought a Muscovy duck to Lady Macadam, who
had, as I have related, in a manner educated his sister Kate. That
duck was the first of the kind we had ever seen, and many thought it
was of the goose species, only with short bowly legs. It was,
however, a tractable and homely beast; and after some confabulation,
as my lady herself told Mrs Balwhidder, it was received into
fellowship by her other ducks and poultry. It is not, however, so
much on account of the rarity of the creature, that I have
introduced it here, as for the purpose of relating a wonderful
operation that was performed on it by Miss Sabrina, the
schoolmistress.

There happened to be a sack of beans in our stable, and Lady
Macadam's hens and fowls, which were not overly fed at home through
the inattention of her servants, being great stravaigers for their
meat, in passing the door went in to pick, and the Muscovy, seeing a
hole in the bean-sack, dabbled out a crapful before she was
disturbed. The beans swelled on the poor bird's stomach, and her
crap bellied out like the kyte of a Glasgow magistrate, until it was