 for a clergyman, and macerating his body with the privations
which were necessary in seeking food for his mind, his grand-dame became daily
less able to struggle with her little farm, and was at length obliged to throw
it up to the new Laird of Dumbiedikes. That great personage was no absolute Jew,
and did not cheat her in making the bargain more than was tolerable. He even
gave her permission to tenant the house in which she had lived with her husband,
as long as it should be »tenantable;« only he protested against paying for a
farthing of repairs, any benevolence which he possessed being of the passive,
but by no means of the active mood.
    In the meanwhile, from superior shrewdness, skill, and other circumstances,
some of them purely accidental, Davie Deans gained a footing in the world, the
possession of some wealth, the reputation of more, and a growing disposition to
preserve and increase his store; for which, when he thought upon it seriously,
he was inclined to blame himself. From his knowledge in agriculture, as it was
then practised, he became a sort of favourite with the Laird, who had no great
pleasure either in active sports or in society, and was wont to end his daily
saunter by calling at the cottage of Woodend.
    Being himself a man of slow ideas and confused utterance, Dumbiedikes used
to sit or stand for half-an-hour with an old laced hat of his father's upon his
head, and an empty tobacco-pipe in his mouth, with his eyes following Jeanie
Deans, or »the lassie,« as he called her, through the course of her daily
domestic labour; while her father, after exhausting the subject of bestial, of
ploughs, and of harrows, often took an opportunity of going full-sail into
controversial subjects, to which discussions the dignitary listened with much
seeming patience, but without making any reply, or, indeed, as most people
thought, without understanding a single word of what the orator was saying.
Deans, indeed, denied this stoutly, as an insult at once to his own talents for
expounding hidden truths, of which he was a little vain, and to the Laird's
capacity of understanding them. He said, »Dumbiedikes was nane of these flashy
gentles, wi' lace on their skirts and swords at their tails, that were rather
for riding on horseback to hell than ganging barefooted to heaven. He wasna like
his father - nae profane company-keeper - nae swearer - nae drinker - nae
frequenter of play-house, or
