‘And what though winter will pinch severe Through locks of grey and a cloak that’s old? Yet keep up thy heart, bold cavalier, For a cup of sack shall fence the cold.’
“I must be your guest here to-day, sister. I wish to hear the issue of this gathering on Loudon-hill, though I cannot conceive their standing a body of horse appointed like our guests this morning.--Woe’s me, the time has been that I would have liked ill to have sate in biggit wa’s waiting for the news of a skirmish to be fought within ten miles of me! But, as the old song goes,
‘For time will rust the brightest blade, And years will break the strongest bow; Was ever wight so starkly made, But time and years would overthrow?’”
“We are well pleased you will stay, brother,” said Lady Margaret; “I will take my old privilege to look after my household, whom this collation has thrown into some disorder, although it is uncivil to leave you alone.”
“O, I hate ceremony as I hate a stumbling horse,” replied the Major. “Besides, your person would be with me, and your mind with the cold meat and reversionary pasties.--Where is Edith?”
“Gone to her room a little evil-disposed, I am informed, and laid down in her bed for a gliff,” said her grandmother; “as soon as she wakes, she shall take some drops.”
“Pooh! pooh! she’s only sick of the soldiers,” answered Major Bellenden. “She’s not accustomed to see one acquaintance led out to be shot, and another marching off to actual service, with some chance of not finding his way back again. She would soon be used to it, if the civil war were to break out again.”
“God forbid, brother!” said Lady Margaret.
“Ay, Heaven forbid, as you say--and, in the meantime, I’ll take a hit at trick-track with Harrison.”
“He has ridden out, sir,” said Gudyill, “to try if he can hear any tidings of the battle.”
“D--n the battle,” said the Major; “it puts this family as much out of order as if there had never been such a thing in the country before--and yet there was such a place as Kilsythe, John.”
“Ay, and as Tippermuir, your honour,” replied Gudyill, “where I was his honour my late master’s rear-rank man.”
“And Alford, John,” pursued the Major, “where I commanded the horse; and Innerlochy, where I was the Great Marquis’s aid-de-camp; and Auld Earn, and Brig o’ Dee.”