a broken and soiled white feather, intersected with one which had been
shed from the train of a peacock. To her dress, which was a kind of
riding-habit, she stitched, pinned, and otherwise secured, a large
furbelow of artificial flowers, all crushed, wrinkled and dirty, which
had at first bedecked a lady of quality, then descended to her Abigail,
and dazzled the inmates of the servants' hall. A tawdry scarf of yellow
silk, trimmed with tinsel and spangles, which had seen as hard service,
and boasted as honourable a transmission, was next flung over one
shoulder, and fell across her person in the manner of a shoulder-belt, or
baldrick. Madge then stripped off the coarse ordinary shoes, which she
wore, and replaced them by a pair of dirty satin ones, spangled and
embroidered to match the scarf, and furnished with very high heels. She
had cut a willow switch in her morning's walk, almost as long as a boy's
fishing-rod. This she set herself seriously to peel, and when it was
transformed into such a wand as the Treasurer or High Steward bears on
public occasions, she told Jeanie that she thought they now looked
decent, as young women should do upon the Sunday morning, and that, as
the bells had done ringing, she was willing to conduct her to the
Interpreter's house.

Jeanie sighed heavily, to think it should be her lot on the Lord's day,
and during kirk time too, to parade the street of an inhabited village
with so very grotesque a comrade; but necessity had no law, since,
without a positive quarrel with the madwoman, which, in the
circumstances, would have been very unadvisable, she could see no means
of shaking herself free of her society.

As for poor Madge, she was completely elated with personal vanity, and
the most perfect satisfaction concerning her own dazzling dress, and
superior appearance. They entered the hamlet without being observed,