The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete by Walter Scott (books to read in your 20s txt) 📕

CHAPTER FOURTH. Elswhair he colde right weel lay down the law, But in his house was meek as is a daw. Davie Lindsay.

“There has been Jock Driver the carrier here, speering about his new graith,” said Mrs. Saddletree to her husband, as he crossed his threshold, not with the purpose, by any means, of consulting him upon his own affairs, but merely to intimate, by a gentle recapitulation, how much duty she had gone through in his absence.

“Weel,” replied Bartoline, and deigned not a word more.

“And the laird of Girdingburst has had his running footman here, and ca’d himsell (he’s a civil pleasant young gentleman), to see when the broidered saddle-cloth for his sorrel horse will be ready, for he wants it agane the Kelso races.”

“Weel, aweel,” replied Bartoline, as laconically as before.

“And his lordship, the Earl of Blazonbury, Lord Flash and Flame, is like to be clean daft, that the harness for the six Flanders mears, wi’ the crests, coronets, housings, and mountings conform, are no sent hame according to promise gien.”

“Weel, weel, weel—weel, weel, gudewife,” said Saddletree, “if he gangs daft, we’ll hae him cognosced—it’s a’ very weel.”

“It’s weel that ye think sae, Mr. Saddletree,” answered his helpmate, rather nettled at the indifference with which her report was received; “there’s mony ane wad hae thought themselves affronted, if sae mony customers had ca’d and naebody to answer them but women-folk; for a’ the lads were aff, as soon as your back was turned, to see Porteous hanged, that might be counted upon; and sae, you no being at hame—”

“Houts, Mrs. Saddletree,” said Bartoline, with an air of consequence, “dinna deave me wi’ your nonsense; I was under the necessity of being elsewhere—non omnia—as Mr. Crossmyloof said, when he was called by two macers at once—non omnia possumus—pessimus—possimis—I ken our law-latin offends Mr. Butler’s ears, but it means, Naebody, an it were the Lord President himsell, can do twa turns at ance.”

“Very right, Mr. Saddletree,” answered his careful helpmate, with a sarcastic smile; “and nae doubt it’s a decent thing to leave your wife to look after young gentlemen’s saddles and bridles, when ye gang to see a man, that never did ye nae ill, raxing a halter.”

“Woman,” said Saddletree, assuming an elevated tone, to which the meridian had somewhat contributed, “desist,—I say forbear, from intromitting with affairs thou canst not understand. D’ye think I was born to sit here brogging an elshin through bend-leather, when sic men as Duncan Forbes, and that other Arniston chield there, without muckle greater parts, if the close-head speak true, than mysell maun be presidents and king’s advocates, nae doubt, and wha but they? Whereas, were favour equally distribute, as in the days of the wight Wallace—”

“I ken naething we wad hae gotten by the wight Wallace,” said Mrs. Saddletree, “unless, as I hae heard the auld folk tell, they fought in thae days wi’ bend-leather guns, and then it’s a chance but what, if he had bought them, he might have forgot to pay for them. And as for the greatness of your parts, Bartley, the folk in the close-head* maun ken mair about them than I do, if they make sic a report of them.”

* [Close-head, the entrance of a blind alley.]

“I tell ye, woman,” said Saddletree, in high dudgeon, “that ye ken naething about these matters. In Sir William Wallace’s days there was nae man pinned down to sic a slavish wark as a saddler’s, for they got ony leather graith that they had use for ready-made out of Holland.”

“Well,” said Butler, who was, like many of his profession, something of a humorist and dry joker, “if that be the case, Mr. Saddletree, I think we have changed for the better; since we make our own harness, and only import our lawyers from Holland.”

“It’s ower true, Mr. Butler,” answered Bartoline, with a sigh; “if I had had the luck—or rather, if my father had had the sense to send me to Leyden and Utrecht to learn the Substitutes and Pandex—”

“You mean the Institutes—Justinian’s Institutes, Mr. Saddletree?” said Butler.

“Institutes and substitutes are synonymous words, Mr. Butler, and used indifferently as such in deeds of tailzie, as you may see in Balfour’s Practiques, or Dallas of St. Martin’s Styles. I understand these things pretty weel, I thank God but I own I should have studied in Holland.”

“To comfort you, you might not have been farther forward than you are now, Mr. Saddletree,” replied Mr. Butler; “for our Scottish advocates are an aristocratic race. Their brass is of the right Corinthian quality, and Non cuivis contigit adire Corinthum—Aha, Mr. Saddletree?”

“And aha, Mr. Butler,” rejoined Bartoline, upon whom, as may be well supposed, the jest was lost, and all but the sound of the words, “ye said a gliff syne it was quivis, and now I heard ye say cuivis with my ain ears, as plain as ever I heard a word at the fore-bar.”

“Give me your patience, Mr. Saddletree, and I’ll explain the discrepancy in three words,” said Butler, as pedantic in his own department, though with infinitely more judgment and learning, as Bartoline was in his self-assumed profession of the law—“Give me your patience for a moment—You’ll grant that the nominative case is that by which a person or thing is nominated or designed, and which may be called the primary case, all others being formed from it by alterations of the termination in the learned languages, and by prepositions in our modern Babylonian jargons—You’ll grant me that, I suppose, Mr. Saddletree?”

“I dinna ken whether I will or no—ad avisandum, ye ken—naebody should be in a hurry to make admissions, either in point of law, or in point of fact,” said Saddletree, looking, or endeavouring to look, as if he understood what was said.

“And the dative case,” continued Butler

“I ken what a tutor dative is,” said Saddletree, “readily enough.”

“The dative case,” resumed