He found Robert Bruce chaffering with a country girl over
some butter, for which he wanted to give her less than the
market-value. This roused his indignation, and put him in a much fitter
mood for an altercation.
"I winna gie ye mair nor fivepence. Hoo are ye the day, Mr Doo? I tell
ye it has a goo (Fren. go???t) o' neeps or something waur."
"Hoo can that be, Mr Bruce, at this sizzon o' the year, whan there's
plenty o' gerss for man an' beast an' a' cratur?" said the girl.
"It's no for me to say hoo it can be. That's no my business. Noo, Mr
Doo?"
Bruce, whose very life lay in driving bargains, had a great dislike to
any interruption of the process. Yet he forsook the girl as if he had
said all he had to say, and turned to James Dow. For he wanted to get
rid of him before concluding his bargain with the girl, whose butter he
was determined to have even if he must pay her own price for it. Like
the Reeve in the Canterbury Tales, who "ever rode the hinderest of the
rout," being such a rogue and such a rogue-catcher that he could not
bear anybody behind his back, Bruce, when about the business that his
soul loved, eschewed the presence of any third person.
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