etime, maybe six or eight days,
after the birth-day of our good old King George the Third--for I
recollect the withering branches of lily-oak and flowers still sticking
up behind the signs, and over the lamp-posts,--that my respected
acquaintance and customer, Peter Farrel the baker, to whom I have made
many a good suit of pepper-and-salt clothes--which he preferred from
their not dirtying so easily with the bakehouse--called in upon me,
requesting me, in a very pressing manner, to take a pleasure ride up with
him the length of Roslin, in his good-brother's bit phieton, to eat a
wheen strawberries, and see how the forthcoming harvest was getting on.

That the offer was friendly admitted not of doubt, but I did not like to
accept for two-three reasons; among which were, in the first place, my
awareness of the danger of riding in such vehicles--having read sundry
times in the newspapers of folk having been tumbled out of them, drunk or
sober, head-foremost, and having got eyes knocked ben, skulls cloured,
and collar-bones broken; and, in the second place, the expense of feeding
the horse, together with our feeding ourselves in meat and drink during
the journey--let alone tolls, strawberries and cream, bawbees to the
waiter, the hostler, and what not. But let me speak the knock-him-down
truth, and shame the de'il,--above all, I was afraid of being seen by my
employers wheeling about, on a work-day, like a gentleman, dressed out in
my best, and leaving my business to mind itself as it best could.

Peter Farrel, however, being a man of determination, stuck to his text
like a horse-leech; so, after a great to-do, and considerable
argle-bargling, he got me, by dint of powerful persuasion, to give him my
hand on the subject. Accordingly, at the hour appointed, I popped up the
back loan with my stick in my hand--Peter having agreed to be waiting for
me on the roadside, a bit beyond the head of the town, near Gallows-hall
toll. The cat should be let out of the pock by my declaring, that Nanse,
the goodwife, had also a finger in the pie--as, do what ye like, women
will make their points good--she having overcome me in her wheedling way,
by telling me, that it was curious I had no ambition to speel the ladder
of gentility, and hold up my chin in imitation of my betters.

That we had a most beautiful drive I cannot deny; for though I would not
allow Peter to touch the horse with the whip, in case it might run away,
fling, or tro