Page:Guy Mannering Vol 1.djvu/44

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GUY MANNERING.

Luckie Howatson is very expeditious;—there was ance a lass that was in that way—she did not live far from hereabouts—ye need na shake your head and groan, Dominie—I am sure the kirk dues were all well paid, and what can a man do more?—it was laid till her ere she had on a sark ower her head; and the man that she since wadded does not think her a pin the worse for the misfortune.—They live, Mr Mannering, by the shore-side, at Annan, and a more decent orderly couple, with six as fine bairns as you would wish to see plash in a salt-water dub; and little curlie Godfrey—that's the eldest, the come o' will, as I may say—he's on board an excise yacht—I hae a cousin at the board of excise, that's Commissioner Bertram; he got his commissionership in the great contest for the county, that ye must have heard of, for it was appealed to the House of Commons—now I should have voted there for the Laird of Balruddery; but ye see my father was a Jacobite, and out with Kenmore, so he never took the oaths; and I