The Ayrshire Legatees

On Friday, Miss Mally Glencairn received a brief note from Mrs. Pringle,

informing her, that she and the Doctor would reach the manse, "God

willing," in time for tea on Saturday; and begging her, therefore, to go

over from Irvine, and see that the house was in order for their

reception. This note was written from Glasgow, where they had arrived,

in their own carriage, from Carlisle on the preceding day, after

encountering, as Mrs. Pringle said, "more hardships and extorshoning than

all the dangers of the sea which they met with in the smack of Leith that

took them to London."

As soon as Miss Mally received this intelligence, she went to Miss

Isabella Tod, and requested her company for the next day to Garnock,

where they arrived betimes to dine with Mr. Snodgrass. Mrs. Glibbans and

her daughter Becky were then on a consolatory visit to Mr. Craig. We

mentioned in the last chapter, that the crying of Mrs. Craig had come on;

and that Mrs. Glibbans, according to promise, and with the most anxious

solicitude, had gone to wait the upshot. The upshot was most

melancholy,--Mrs. Craig was soon no more;--she was taken, as Mrs.

Glibbans observed on the occasion, from the earthly arms of her husband,

to the spiritual bosom of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, which was far

better. But the baby survived; so that, what with getting a nurse, and

the burial, and all the work and handling that a birth and death in one

house at the same time causes, Mr. Craig declared, that he could not do

without Mrs. Glibbans; and she, with all that Christianity by which she

was so zealously distinguished, sent for Miss Becky, and took up her

abode with him till it would please Him, without whom there is no

comfort, to wipe the eyes of the pious elder. In a word, she staid so

long, that a rumour began to spread that Mr. Craig would need a wife to

look after his bairn; and that Mrs. Glibbans was destined to supply the

desideratum.

Mr. Snodgrass, after enjoying his dinner society with Miss Mally and Miss

Isabella, thought it necessary to dispatch a courier, in the shape of a

barefooted servant lass, to Mr. Micklewham, to inform the elders that the

Doctor was expected home in time for tea, leaving it to their discretion

either to greet his safe return at the manse, or in any other form or

manner that would be most agreeable to themselves. These important news

were soon diffused through the clachan. Mr. Micklewham dismissed his

school an hour before the wonted time, and there was a universal interest

and curiosity excited, to see the Doctor coming home in his own coach.

All the boys of Garnock assembled at the braehead which commands an

extensive view of the Kilmarnock road, the only one from Glasgow that

runs through the parish; the wives with their sucklings were seated on

the large stones at their respective door-cheeks; while their cats were

calmly reclining on the window soles. The lassie weans, like clustering

bees, were mounted on the carts that stood before Thomas Birlpenny the

vintner's door, churming with anticipated delight; the old men took their

stations on the dike that incloses the side of the vintner's kail-yard,

and "a batch of wabster lads," with green aprons and thin yellow faces,

planted themselves at the gable of the malt kiln, where they were wont,

when trade was better, to play at the hand-ball; but, poor fellows, since

the trade fell off, they have had no heart for the game, and the

vintner's half-mutchkin stoups glitter in empty splendour unrequired on

the shelf below the brazen sconce above the bracepiece, amidst the idle

pewter pepper-boxes, the bright copper tea-kettle, the coffee-pot that

has never been in use, and lids of saucepans that have survived their

principals,--the wonted ornaments of every trig change-house kitchen.