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Updated: June 20, 2025
"Why, then," said he, "what's your name?" "David Balfour," said I; and then, thinking that a man with so fine a coat must like fine people, I added for the first time, "of Shaws." It never occurred to him to doubt me, for a Highlander is used to see great gentle-folk in great poverty; but as he had no estate of his own, my words nettled a very childish vanity he had.
Hitherto I have been compelling the reader to move about among what we should call the lower classes peasants, burghers, traders, parish priests, Dissenters, heretics, Cossacks, and the like and he feels perhaps inclined to complain that he has had no opportunity of mixing with what old-fashioned people call gentle-folk and persons of quality.
Only her strong London accent distressed him: he feared lest it might corrupt the speech of Pollyooly and the Lump, which, owing to the care of their Aunt Hannah, who had for many years been housekeeper for Lady Constantia Deeping, was that of gentle-folk. However, he talked kindly and sympathetically to Millicent, questioned her about her acquirements, and gave her leave to stay.
Quick! quick! cried Tommo, twanging away with all his might, and showing his white teeth, as he smiled back at the little gentle-folk. Bless us! How Tessa did tune up at that! She chirped away like a real bird, forgetting all about the tears on her cheeks, the ache in her hands, and the heaviness at her heart. The children laughed, and clapped their hands, and cried 'More! more!
"I think we will have met but the once, and will can part like gentle-folk." "O, let me have one to believe in me!" I pleaded, "I canna bear it else. The whole world is clanned against me. How am I to go through with my dreadful fate? If there's to be none to believe in me, I cannot do it. The man must just die, for I cannot do it."
When gentle-folk meet, courtesies pass; and I will not weary other people with relating all the compliments and counter-compliments that we exchanged, all in the most approved manner. Occasions like this, when tongues wagged smoothly and speech flowed free, were always especially pleasing to me, who am naturally inclined to be tongue-tied with women.
Moreover this mediæval spring is the spring neither of the shepherd, nor of the farmer, nor of any man to whom spring brings work and anxiety and hope of gain; it is a mere vague spring of gentle-folk, or at all events of well-to-do burgesses, taking their pleasure on the lawns of castle parks, or the green holiday places close to the city, much as we see them in the first part of "Faust;" a sweet but monotonous charm of grass, beneath green lime tree, or in the South the elm or plane; under which are seated the poet and the fiddler, playing and singing for the young women, their hair woven with chaplets of fresh flowers, dancing upon the sward.
When the visitors paused to see what we were doing I did not look at them but went on with my work. There was a good deal of whispering and laughing among them, and I felt without looking at them that they were not gentle-folk, at least such gentle-folk as I knew.
"Snelling, me boy, ye'd wint the bird from the bush with yer beguilin' ways. Ye've brought proud tears to the eyes of an aged parent, and I'll take a sup out of that high-showldered bottle which you kape under the counter for the gentle-folk in the other room." A general laugh greeted Mr.
"Not at all," rejoined Miss Compton. "We should never forget the stratum of society to which we belong, and what we owe to the maintenance of the position we hold. My father has always impressed upon me the fact that gentlemen or gentlewomen are always gentle-folk under any and all circumstances and conditions.
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