the
best yet; he had saved me, had spared me rather, when others had it in
their minds to murder me outright; but the blood of James lay at his
door; and I thought his present dissimulation with myself a thing below
pardon. That he should affect to find a pleasure in my discourse almost
surprised me out of my patience. I would sit and watch him with a kind
of a slow fire of anger in my bowels. "Ah, friend, friend," I would
think to myself, "if you were but through with this affair of the
memorial, would you not kick me in the streets?" Here I did him, as
events have proved, the most grave injustice; and I think he was at once
far more sincere, and a far more artful performer, than I supposed.

But I had some warrant for my incredulity in the behaviour of that court
of young advocates that hung about him in the hope of patronage. The
sudden favour of a lad not previously heard of troubled them at first
out of measure, but two days were not gone by before I found myself
surrounded with flattery and attention. I was the same young man, and
neither better nor bonnier, that they had rejected a month before; and
now there was no civility too fine for me! The same, do I say? It was
not so; and the by-name by which I went behind my back confirmed it.
Seeing me so firm with the Advocate, and persuaded that I was to fly
high and far, they had taken a word from the golfing green, and called
me _the Tee'd Ball_.[14] I was told I was now "one of themselves"; I was
to taste of their soft lining, who had already made my own experience of
the roughness of the outer husk; and one, to whom I had been presented
in Hope Park, was so assured as even to remind me of that meeting. I
told him I had not the pleasure of remembering it.

"Why," says he, "it was Miss Grant herself presented me! My name is
So-and-so."

"It may very well be, sir," said I; "but I have kept no mind of it."

At which he desisted; and in the midst of the disgust that commonly
overflowed my spirits I had a glisk of pleasure.

But I have not patience to dwell upon that time at length. When I was in
company with these young politics I was borne down with shame for myself
and my own plain ways, and scorn for them and their duplicity. Of the
two evils, I thought Prestongrange to be the least; and while I was
always as stiff as buckram to the young bloods, I made rather a
dissimulation of my hard feelings towards the Advocate, and was (in old
Mr. Campbell's word) "soople