placed a broken and
soiled white feather, intersected with one which had been shed from the train of
a peacock. To her dress, which was a kind of riding-habit, she stitched, pinned,
and otherwise secured, a large furbelow of artificial flowers, all crushed,
wrinkled and dirty, which had at first bedecked a lady of quality, then
descended to her Abigail, and dazzled the inmates of the servants' hall. A
tawdry scarf of yellow silk, trimmed with tinsel and spangles, which had seen as
hard service, and boasted as honourable a transmission, was next flung over one
shoulder, and fell across her person in the manner of a shoulder-belt, or
baldrick. Madge then stripped off the coarse ordinary shoes, which she wore, and
replaced them by a pair of dirty satin ones, spangled and embroidered to match
the scarf, and furnished with very high heels. She had cut a willow switch in
her morning's walk, almost as long as a boy's fishing-rod. This she set herself
seriously to peel, and when it was transformed into such a wand as the Treasurer
or High Steward bears on public occasions, she told Jeanie that she thought they
now looked decent, as young women should do upon the Sunday morning, and that,
as the bells had done ringing, she was willing to conduct her to the
Interpreter's house.
    Jeanie sighed heavily, to think it should be her lot on the Lord's day, and
during kirk time too, to parade the street of an inhabited village with so very
grotesque a comrade; but necessity had no law, since, without a positive quarrel
with the madwoman, which, in the circumstances, would have been very
unadvisable, she could see no means of shaking herself free of her society.
    As for poor Madge, she was completely elated with personal vanity, and the
most perfect satisfaction concerning her own dazzling dress, and superior
appearance. They entered the hamlet without being observed, except by one old
woman, who, being nearly »high-gravel blind,« was only conscious that something
very fine and glittering was passing by, and dropped as deep a reverence to
Madge as she would have done to a countess. This filled up the measure of
Madge's self-approbation. She minced, she ambled, she smiled, she simpered, and
waved Jeanie Deans forward with the condescension of a noble chaperone, who has
undertaken the charge of a country miss on her first journey to the capital.
    Jeanie followed in patience, and with her eyes fixed on