Poor Donald! he was on such
occasions like Gideon's fleece, moist with the noble
element, which, of course, fell not on us. But it
was his only fault, and when pressed to drink _doch-an-dorroch_
to my ladyship's good health, it would
have been ill taken to have refused the pledge, nor
was he willing to do such discourtesy. It was, I
repeat, his only fault, nor had we any great right
to complain; for if it rendered him a little more
talkative, it augmented his ordinary share of punctilious
civility, and he only drove slower, and talked
longer and more pompously than when he had
not come by a drop of usquebaugh. It was, we
remarked, only on such occasions that Donald talked
with an air of importance of the family of MacLeish;
and we had no title to be scrupulous in censuring
a foible, the consequences of which were
confined within such innocent limits.
We became so much accustomed to Donald's
mode of managing us, that we observed with some
interest the art which he used to produce a little
agreeable surprise, by concealing from us the spot
where he proposed our halt to be made, when it
was of an unusual and interesting character. This
was so much his wont, that when he made apologies
at setting off, for being obliged to stop in
some strange solitary place, till the horses should
eat the corn which be brought on with them for
that purpose, our imagination used to be on the
stretch to guess what romantic retreat he had
secretly fixed upon for our noontide baiting-place.
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