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"Eh, my Lord William," an altered voice came from the door-step, where Dame Barbara MacKim, now clothed and in her right mind, stood louting low before the young Earl, "but this is a blythe and calamitatious day for this poor bit bigging o' the Carlinwark to think that your honour should visit his servants! Will you no come ben and sit doon in the house-place?
"An it like your honour, I am something dull o' hearing; and I'll no deny but I might have maybe taen a stirrup-cup at parting frae the auld bigging whare I hae dwelt sae lang; and having naebody to pledge, nae doubt I was obliged to do mysell reason, or else leave the end o' the brandy stoup to thae papists and that wad be a waste, as your honour kens."
A voice from behind interrupted his ecstatic description "Praetorian here, Praetorian there, I mind the bigging o't." Both at once turned round, Lovel with surprise, and Oldbuck with mingled surprise and indignation, at so uncivil an interruption. An auditor had stolen upon them, unseen and unheard, amid the energy of the Antiquary's enthusiastic declamation, and the attentive civility of Lovel.
"Scoffer!" cried Gordon, and M'Iver said no more, but led us through the dark to the house whose light so cheerfully smiled before us. The house, when we came to it, proved a trig little edifice of far greater comfort than most of the common houses of the Highlands not a dry-stone bigging but a rubble tenement, very snugly thacked and windowed, and having a piece of kail-plot at its rear.
A voice from behind interrupted his ecstatic description "Praetorian here, Praetorian there, I mind the bigging o't." Both at once turned round, Lovel with surprise, and Oldbuck with mingled surprise and indignation, at so uncivil an interruption. An auditor had stolen upon them, unseen and unheard, amid the energy of the Antiquary's enthusiastic declamation, and the attentive civility of Lovel.
"Thou hast had a long journey, son Henry," said Glover, who had always used that affectionate style of speech, though no ways akin to the young artisan; "ay, and hast seen many a river besides Tay, and many a fair bigging besides St. Johnston." "But none that I like half so well, and none that are half so much worth my liking," answered the smith.
"Why, an it like your honour," said Richie, who now, having recovered his senses sufficiently to observe the respectable exterior of Master George, threw more civility into his manner than at first, "the West- Port is a gate of our city, as yonder brick arches at Whitehall form the entrance of the king's palace here, only that the West-Port is of stonern work, and mair decorated with architecture and the policy of bigging."
It was a very unfortunate occurrence; for Mr M'Lucre having a secret interest, as I have intimated, in the Whinstone quarry, when he heard of taking down walls and bigging them up again, he listened with greedy ears to the dubieties of Mr Threeper, and loudly, and to the heart's content of Mr Smeddum, condemned the frailty and infirmity of the kirk, as a building in general.
"Was't in your lands?" asked Elchies, indifferent, but willing to help on a good topic in a company where a variety of classes made the conversation anything but brisk. "No," said Argyll, "it was in Doom, the place of a small landowner, Lamond, whose castle it is but a ramshackle old bigging now you may have noticed on your left as you rode round.
In amends, it was arranged that Edward Waverley and his lady, who, with the Baron, proposed an immediate journey to Waverley-Honour, should, in their way, spend a few days at an estate which Colonel Talbot had been tempted to purchase in Scotland as a very great bargain, and at which he proposed to reside for some time. This is no mine ain house, I ken by the bigging o't'. OLD SONG.
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