And I believe
you forget that I have yet to see my daughter."
I began to be a little relieved upon this speech and a change in
the man's manner that I spied in him as soon as the name of money
fell between us.
"I was thinking it would be more fit--if you will excuse the
plainness of my dressing in your presence--that I should go forth
and leave you to encounter her alone?" said I.
"What I would have looked for at your hands!" says he; and there
was no mistake but what he said it civilly.
I thought this better and better still, and as I began to pull on
my hose, recalling the man's impudent mendicancy at
Prestongrange's, I determined to pursue what seemed to be my
victory.
"If you have any mind to stay some while in Leyden," said I, "this
room is very much at your disposal, and I can easy find another for
myself: in which way we shall have the least amount of flitting
possible, there being only one to change."
"Why, sir," said he, making his bosom big, "I think no shame of a
poverty I have come by in the service of my king; I make no secret
that my affairs are quite involved; and for the moment, it would be
even impossible for me to undertake a journey."
"Until you have occasion to communicate with your friends," said I,
"perhaps it might be convenient for you (as of course it would be
honourable to myself) if you were to regard yourself in the light
of my guest?"
"Sir," said he, "when an offer is frankly made, I think I honour
myself most to imitate that frankness. Your hand, Mr. David; you
have the character that I respect the most; you are one of those
from whom a gentleman can take a favour and no more words about it.
I am an old soldier," he went on, looking rather disgusted-like
around my chamber, "and you need not fear I shall prove
burthensome. I have ate too often at a dyke-side, drank of the
ditch, and had no roof but the rain."
"I should be telling you," said I, "that our breakfasts are sent
customarily in about this time of morning. I propose I should go
now to the tavern, and bid them add a cover for yourself and delay
the meal the matter of an hour, which will give you an interval to
meet your daughter in."
Methought his nostrils wagged at this. "O, an hour" says he.
"That is perhaps superfluous. Half an hour, Mr. David, or say
twenty minutes; I shall do very well in that. And by the way," he
adds, detaining me by the coat, "what is it you drink in the
morning, whether ale or wine?"
"To be frank with you, sir," says I, "I drink nothing else but
spare, cold water."
"Tut-tut," says he, "that is fair destruction to the stomach, take
an old campaigner's word for it. Our country spirit at home is
perhaps the most entirely wholesome; but as that is not come-at-
able, Rhenish or a white wine of Burgundy will be next best."
"I shall make it my business to see you are supplied," said I.
"Why, very good," said he, "and we shall make a man of you yet, Mr.
David."
By this time, I can hardly say that I was minding him at all,
beyond an odd thought of the kind of father-in-law that he was like
to prove; and all my cares centred about the lass his daughter, to
whom I determined to convey some warning of her visitor. I stepped
to the door accordingly, and cried through the panels, knocking
thereon at the same time: "Miss Drummond, here is your father come
at last."
With that I went forth upon my errand, having (by two words)
extraordinarily damaged my affairs.
CHAPTER XXVI--THE THREESOME
Whether or not I was to be so much blamed, or rather perhaps
pitied, I must leave others to judge. My shrewdness (of which I
have a good deal, too) seems not so great with the ladies. No
doubt, at the moment when I awaked her, I was thinking a good deal
of the effect upon James More; and similarly when I returned and we
were all sat down to breakfast, I continued to behave to the young
lady with deference and distance; as I still think to have been
most wise.