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How does it strike you? Well, sir, it set that countryman a-thinking and pulling his whiskers so vigorously that I feared his goatee would give way. I knew almost to a dead certainty that I had won. The man, Fogg, who hesitates gives way in the end, always. "Breadland reflected a minute, then spoke out: 'I'll do it, he said. ''Tis about the easiest and safest way of getting hunk.
Sitting, as I was saying, at our tea, one of the servant lasses came into the room with a sort of a panic laugh, and said, "What are ye all doing there when the Breadland's in a low?" "The Breadland in a low!" cried I. "Oh, ay!" cried she; "bleezing at the windows and the rigging, and out at the lum, like a killogie."
"No; but we managed, somehow or other, to get out of town; though when everything was fixed, including a few dollars to Breadland on account, it was a close shave. Fortunately, the railroad fares to our next stand were light and we had three days there. It was in that sylvan retreat by the flowing river we nearly met our Waterloo. Speak of bad business. It was something weird."
As I told you, I was unable to settle the hotel bill at the last town, and in addition we had now the handicap of an extra hotel and railroad fare for Breadland's clerk, who according to agreement was to travel with the show until the whole account with Breadland was squared up." "The prospects were not encouraging."
In the midst of all this, Effie Malcolm had run off to the Breadland for her sister Kate, and the two lassies came flying breathless, with Miss Girzie Gilchrist, the Lady Skimmilk, pursuing them like desperation, or a griffin, down the avenue; for Kate, in her hurry, had flung down her seam, a new printed gown, that she was helping to make, and it had fallen into a boyne of milk that was ready for the creaming, by which issued a double misfortune to Miss Girzie, the gown being not only ruined, but licking up the cream.
Such was the end of Miss Girzie; and the Breadland, which the young laird, my pupil that was, by growing a resident at Edinburgh, never rebuilt.
Upon the which, we all went to the door, and there, to be sure, we did see that the Breadland was burning, the flames crackling high out o'er the trees, and the sparks flying like a comet's tail in the firmament.
Well do I remember the admiration that I had, when, in a fine sunny morning of the first spring after he took the Breadland, I saw his braird on what had been the cows' grass, as even and pretty as if it had been worked and stripped in the loom with a shuttle.
When we got to the door of his mother's house, she was sitting at the fireside, with her three other bairns at their bread and milk, Kate being then with Lady Skimmilk, at the Breadland, sewing. It was between the day and dark, when the shuttle stands still till the lamp is lighted. But such a shout of joy and thankfulness as rose from that hearth, when Charlie went in!
Miss Girzie, whom they called Lady Skimmilk, had been in a very penurious way as a seamstress, in the Gorbals of Glasgow, while her brother was making the fortune in India, and she was a clever needle-woman none better, as it was said; and she, having some things to make, took Kate Malcolm to help her in the coarse work; and Kate, being a nimble and birky thing, was so useful to the lady, and the complaining man the major, that they invited her to stay with them at the Breadland for the winter, where, although she was holden to her seam from morning to night, her food lightened the hand of her mother, who, for the first time since her coming into the parish, found the penny for the day's darg more than was needed for the meal-basin; and the tea-drinking was beginning to spread more openly, insomuch that, by the advice of the first Mrs Balwhidder, Mrs Malcolm took in tea to sell, and in this way was enabled to eke something to the small profits of her wheel.
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