``My honour,'' so she now termed me, ``would
pe for biding in some fine street apout the town;
now Shanet wad ill like to live in a place where
polish, and sheriffs, and bailiffs, and sic thieves
and trash of the world, could tak puir shentlemen
by the throat, just because they wanted a wheen
dollars in the sporran. She had lived in the bonny
glen of Tomanthoulick---Cot, an ony of the vermint
had come there, her father wad hae wared a
shot on them, and he could hit a buck within as
mony measured yards as e'er a man of his clan.
And the place here was so quiet frae them, they
durst na put their nose ower the gutter. Shanet
owed nobody a bodle, but she couldna pide to see
honest folk and pretty shentlemen forced away to
prison whether they would or no; and then if
Shanet was to lay her tangs ower ane of the ragamuffin's
heads, it would be, maybe, that the law
would gi'ed a hard name.''
One thing I have learned in life,---never to
speak sense when nonsense will answer the purpose
as well. I should have had great difficulty
to convince this practical and disinterested admirer
and vindicator of liberty, that arrests seldom
or never were to be seen in the streets of Edinburgh,
and to satisfy her of their justice and necessity,
would have been as difficult as to convert her
to the Protestant faith.
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