,« replied Ailie; - »I can keep a secret like my
neighbours; and weel auld Milnwood ken'd it, honest man, for he tauld me where
he keepit his gear, and that's what maist folk like to hae as private as
possibly may be. - But come awa wi' me, hinny, till I show ye the oak-parlour
how grandly it's keepit, just as if ye had been expected hame every day - I loot
naebody sort it but my ain hands. It was a kind o' divertisement to me, though
whiles the tear wan into my ee, and I said to mysell, what needs I fash wi'
grates, and carpets, and cushions, and the muckle brass candlesticks, ony mair?
for they'll ne'er come hame that aught it rightfully.«
    With these words she hauled him away to this sanctum sanctorum, the
scrubbing and cleaning whereof was her daily employment, as its high state of
good order constituted the very pride of her heart. Morton, as he followed her
into the room, underwent a rebuke for not »dighting his shune,« which showed
that Ailie had not relinquished her habits of authority. On entering the
oak-parlour, he could not but recollect the feelings of solemn awe with which,
when a boy, he had been affected at his occasional and rare admission to an
apartment, which he then supposed had not its equal save in the halls of
princes. It may be readily supposed, that the worked-worsted chairs, with their
short ebony legs and long upright backs, had lost much of their influence over
his mind; that the large brass and irons seemed diminished in splendour; that
the green worsted tapestry appeared no masterpiece of the Arras loom; and that
the room looked, on the whole, dark, gloomy, and disconsolate. Yet there were
two objects, »The counterfeit presentment of two brothers,« which, dissimilar as
those described by Hamlet, affected his mind with a variety of sensations. One
full-length portrait represented his father, in complete armour, with a
countenance indicating his masculine and determined character; and the other set
forth his uncle, in velvet and brocade, looking as if he were ashamed of his own
finery, though entirely indebted for it to the liberality of the painter.
    »It was an idle fancy,« Ailie said, »to dress the honest auld man in thae
expensive fal-lalls that he ne'er wore in his life, instead o' douce Raploch
grey, and his band wi' the