"Now, a plague on thee for a cold, downhearted goosecap," answered
the father. "I can read a woman's brow as well, and better, than
thou, and I can see no such matter on hers. What, the foul fiend,
man! there thou wast lying like a lord in thy elbow chair, as sound
asleep as a judge, when, hadst thou been a lover of any spirit,
thou wouldst have been watching the east for the first ray of the
sun. But there thou layest, snoring I warrant, thinking nought
about her, or anything else; and the poor girl rises at peep of
day, lest any one else should pick up her most precious and vigilant
Valentine, and wakes thee with a grace which--so help me, St.
Macgrider!--would have put life in an anvil; and thou awakest
to hone, and pine, and moan, as if she had drawn a hot iron across
thy lips! I would to St. John she had sent old Dorothy on the
errand, and bound thee for thy Valentine service to that bundle
of dry bones, with never a tooth in her head. She were fittest
Valentine in Perth for so craven a wooer."

"As to craven, father," answered the smith, "there are twenty good
cocks, whose combs I have plucked, can tell thee if I am craven or
no. And Heaven knows that I would give my good land, held by burgess'
tenure, with smithy, bellows, tongs, anvil, and all, providing
it would make your view of the matter the true one. But it is not
of her coyness or her blushes that I speak; it is of the paleness
which so soon followed the red, and chased it from her cheeks; and
it is of the tears which succeeded. It was like the April showers
stealing upon and obscuring the fairest dawning that ever beamed
over the Tay."

"Tutti taitti," replied the glover; "neither Rome nor Perth were