CHAPTER LXXXIV.
One Sunday morning Mr Cupples was returning from church with Alec.
"Ye likit the sermon the day, Mr Cupples."
"What gars ye think that?"
"I saw ye takin' notes a' the time."
"Gleg-eed mole!" said Mr Cupples. "Luik at the notes as ye ca' them."
"Eh! it's a sang!" exclaimed Alec with delight.
"What cud gar ye think I likit sic havers? The crater was preachin'
till's ain shaidow. And he pat me into sic an unchristian temper o'
dislike to him and a' the concern, that I ran to my city o' refuge. I
never gang to the kirk wi'oot it???-I mean my pocket-buik. And I tried to
gie birth till a sang, the quhilk, like Jove, I conceived i' my heid
last nicht."
"Lat me luik at it," said Alec, eagerly.
"Na, ye wadna mak' either rhyme or rizzon o' 't as it stan's. I'll read
it to ye."
"Come and sit doon, than, on the ither side o' the dyke."
A dyke in Scotland is an earthen fence???-to my prejudiced mind, the
ideal of fences; because, for one thing, it never keeps anybody out.
And not to speak of the wild bees' bykes in them, with their
inexpressible honey, like that of Mount Hymettus???-to the recollection
of the man, at least???-they are covered with grass, and wild flowers
grow all about them, through which the wind harps and carps over your
head, filling your sense with the odours of a little modest yellow
tufty flower, for which I never heard a name in Scotland: the English
call it Ladies' Bedstraw.
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