hem stay dinner." "Devil a bit," quoth Captain John
Ferguson, who had again come over from Huntly Burn, and had been
latterly assisting the lady to amuse her Americans, "Devil a bit, my
dear,--they were quite in a mistake, I could see. The one asked Madame
whether she deigned to call her new house Tully-Veolan or
Tillietudlem; and the other, when Maida happened to lay his nose
against the window, exclaimed _pro-di-gi-ous_! In short, they
evidently meant all their humbug not for you, but for the culprit of
Waverley, and the rest of that there rubbish." "Well, well, Skipper,"
was the reply, "for a' that, the loons would hae been nane the waur o'
their kail."

[Footnote 118: Macneill's _Will and Jean_.]

From this banter it may be inferred that the younger Ferguson had not
as yet been told the Waverley secret--which to any of that house could
never have been any mystery. Probably this, or some similar occasion
soon afterwards, led to his formal initiation; for during the many
subsequent years that the veil was kept on, I used to admire the tact
with which, when in their topmost high-jinks humor, both "Captain
John" and "The Auld Captain" eschewed any the most distant allusion to
the affair.

And this reminds me, that at the period of which I am writing, none of
Scott's own family, except of course his wife, had the advantage in
that matter of the Skipper. Some of them, too, were apt, like him, so
long as no regular confidence had been reposed in them, to avail
themselves of the author's reserve for their own sport among friends.
Thus one morning, just as Scott was opening the door of the parlor,
the rest of the party being already seated at the breakfast-table, the
Dominie was in the act of helping himself to an egg, marked with
{p.290} a peculiar hieroglyphic by Mrs. Thomas Purdie, upon which
Anne Scott, then a lively rattling girl of sixteen, lisped out,
"That's a mysterious-looking egg, Mr. Thomson--what if it should have
been meant for _the Great Unknown_?" Ere the Dominie could reply, her
father advanced to the foot of the table, and having seated himself
and deposited his stick on the carpet beside him, with a sort of
whispered whistle--"What's that Lady Anne's[119] saying?" quoth he; "I
thought it had been well known that the _keelavined_ egg must be a
soft one for _the Sherra_." And so he took his egg, and while all
smiled in silence, poor Anne said gayly, in the midst of her blushes,
"Upon my wor