“I’ll tak my chance o’t, stir,” replied the candidate for service, “rather than gang down about Hamilton, or ony sic far country.”
“Well; step into the kitchen, Cuddie, and I’ll do what I can for you.”
The negotiation was not without difficulties. Morton had first to bring over the housekeeper, who made a thousand objections, as usual, in order to have the pleasure of being besought and entreated; but, when she was gained over, it was comparatively easy to induce old Milnwood to accept of a servant, whose wages were to be in his own option. An outhouse was, therefore, assigned to Mause and her son for their habitation, and it was settled that they were for the time to be admitted to eat of the frugal fare provided for the family, until their own establishment should be completed. As for Morton, he exhausted his own very slender stock of money in order to make Cuddie such a present, under the name of arles, as might show his sense of the value of the recommendation delivered to him.
“And now we’re settled ance mair,” said: Cuddie to his mother, “and if we’re no sae bien and comfortable as we were up yonder, yet life’s life ony gate, and we’re wi’ decent kirk-ganging folk o’ your ain persuasion, mither; there will be nae quarrelling about that.”
“Of my persuasion, hinnie!” said the too-enlightened Mause; “wae’s me for thy blindness and theirs. O, Cuddie, they are but in the court of the Gentiles, and will ne’er win farther ben, I doubt; they are but little better than the prelatists themsells. They wait on the ministry of that blinded man, Peter Poundtext, ance a precious teacher of the Word, but now a backsliding pastor, that has, for the sake of stipend and family maintenance, forsaken the strict path, and gane astray after the black Indulgence. O, my son, had ye but profited by the gospel doctrines ye hae heard in the Glen of Bengonnar, frae the dear Richard Rumbleberry, that sweet youth, who suffered martyrdom in the Grassmarket, afore Candlemas! Didna ye hear him say, that Erastianism was as bad as Prelacy, and that the Indulgence was as bad as Erastianism?”
“Heard ever ony body the like o’ this!” interrupted Cuddie; “we’ll be driven out o’ house and ha’ again afore we ken where to turn oursells. Weej, mither, I hae just ae word mair--An I hear ony mair o’ your din--afore folk, that is, for I dinna mind your clavers mysell, they aye set me sleeping--but if I hear ony mair din afore folk, as I was saying, about Poundtexts and Rumbleberries, and doctrines and malignants, I’se e’en turn a single sodger mysell, or maybe a sergeant or a captain, if ye plague me the mair, and let Rumbleberry and you gang to the deil thegither. I ne’er gat ony gude by his doctrine, as ye ca’t, but a sour fit o’ the batts wi’ sitting amang the wat moss-hags for four hours at a yoking, and the leddy cured me wi’ some hickery-pickery; mair by token, an she had kend how I came by the disorder, she wadna hae been in sic a hurry to mend it.”