Chapter 4

Now hold thy tongue, Billy Bewick, he said, Of peaceful talking: let me be; But if thou art a man, as I think thou art, Come ower the dyke and fight with me.--BORDER MINSTRELSY.

On the morning after this gay evening, the two young men were labouring together in a plot of ground behind Stevenlaw's Land, which the Doctor had converted into a garden, where he raised, with a view to pharmacy as well as botany, some rare plants, which obtained the place from the vulgar the sounding name of the Physic Garden. [Footnote: The Botanic Garden is so termed by the vulgar of Edinburgh.] Mr. Gray's pupils readily complied with his wishes, that they would take some care of this favourite spot, to which both contributed their labours, after which Hartley used to devote himself to the cultivation of the kitchen garden, which he had raised into this respectability from a spot not excelling a common kail-yard, while Richard Middleman did his utmost to decorate with flowers and shrubs a sort of arbour, usually called Miss Menie's bower.

At present they were both in the botanic patch of the garden, when Dick Middlemas asked Hartley why he had left the ball so soon the evening before?

"I should rather ask you," said Hartley, "what pleasure you felt in staying there?--I tell you, Dick, it is a shabby low place this Middlemas of ours. In the smallest burgh in England, every decent freeholder would have been asked if the Member gave a ball."

"What, Hartley!" said his companion, "are you, of all men, a candidate for the honour of mixing with the first-born of the earth? Mercy on us! How will canny Northumberland [throwing a true northern accent on the letter R] acquit himself? Methinks I see thee in thy pea-green suit, dancing a jig with the honourable Miss Maddie MacFudgeon, while chiefs and thanes around laugh as they would do at a hog in armour!"

"You don't, or perhaps you won't, understand me." said Hartley. "I am not such a fool as to desire to be hail-fellow-well-met with these fine folks--I care as little for them as they do for me. But as they do not choose to ask us to dance, I don't see what business they have with our partners."

"Partners, said you!" answered Middlemas; "I don't think Menie is very often yours."

"As often as I ask her," answered Hartley, rather haughtily.

"Ay? Indeed?--I did not think that.--And hang me, if I think so yet." said Middlemas, with the same sarcastic tone. "I tell thee, Adam, I will bet you a bowl of punch, that Miss Gray will not dance with you the next time you ask her. All I stipulate, is to know the day."

"I will lay no bets about Miss Gray," said Hartley; "her father is my master, and I am obliged to him--I think I should act very scurvily, if I were to make her the subject of any idle debate betwixt you