Soon after the marriage of Miss Meg, George, the third son, and youngest of the family, was placed in the counting-house of one of the most eminent West Indian merchants at that period in Glasgow. This incident was in no other respect important in the history of the Lairds of Grippy, than as serving to open a career to George, that would lead him into a higher class of acquaintance than his elder brothers: for it was about this time that the general merchants of the royal city began to arrogate to themselves that aristocratic superiority over the shopkeepers, which they have since established into an oligarchy as proud and sacred, in what respects the reciprocities of society, as the famous Seignories of Venice and of Genoa.

In the character, however, of George, there was nothing ostensibly haughty, or rather his pride had not shown itself in any strong colour, when he first entered on his mercantile career. Like his father, he was firm and persevering; but he wanted something of the old man’s shrewdness; and there was more of avarice in his hopes of wealth than in the sordidness of his father, for they were not elevated by any such ambitious sentiment as that which prompted Claud to strive with such constancy for the recovery of his paternal inheritance. In fact, the young merchant, notwithstanding the superiority of his education and other advantages, we may safely venture to assert, was a more vulgar character than the old pedlar. But his peculiarities did not manifest themselves till long after the period of which we are now speaking.

In the meantime, every thing proceeded with the family much in the same manner as with most others. Claud and his wife had daily altercations about their household affairs. Charles and Isabella narrowed themselves into a small sphere, of which his grandmother, the venerable Lady Plealands, now above fourscore, was their principal associate, and their mutual affection was strengthened by the birth of a son. Walter and Betty Bodle resided at the Divethill; and they, too, had the prospect of adding, as a Malthusian would say, to the mass of suffering mankind. The philosophical Kilmarkeckle continued his abstruse researches as successfully as ever into the affinities between snuff and the natures of beasts and birds, while the Laird of Dirdumwhamle and his Leddy struggled on in the yoke together, as well as a father and step-mother, amidst fifteen children, the progeny of two prior marriages, could reasonably be expected to do, where neither party was particularly gifted with delicacy or forbearance. In a word, they all moved along with the rest of the world during the first twelve months, after the execution of the deed of entail, without experiencing any other particular change in their relative situations than those to which we have alluded.

But the epoch was now drawing near, when Mrs. Walter Walkinshaw was required to prepare herself for becoming a mother, and her husband was no less interested than herself in the event. He did nothing for several months, from morning to night, but inquire how she felt herself, and contrive, in his affectionate simplicity, a thousand insufferable annoyances to one of her disposition, for the purpose of affording her ease and pleasure; all of which were either answered by a laugh, or a slap, as the humour of the moment dictated. Sometimes, when she, regardless of her maternal state, would, in walking to Grippy or Kilmarkeckle, take short cuts across the fields, and over ditches, and through hedges, he would anxiously follow her at a distance, and when he saw her in any difficulty to pass, he would run kindly to her assistance. More than once, at her jocular suggestion, he has lain down in the dry ditches to allow her to step across on his back. Never had wife a more loving or obedient husband. She was allowed in every thing, not only to please herself, but to make him do whatever she pleased; and yet, with all her whims and caprice, she proved so true and so worthy a wife, that he grew every day more and more uxorious.

Nor was his mother less satisfied with Betty Bodle. They enjoyed together the most intimate communion of minds on all topics of household economy; but it was somewhat surprising, that, notwithstanding the care and pains which the old leddy took to instruct her daughter-in-law in all the mysteries of the churn and cheeseset, Mrs. Walter’s butter was seldom fit for market, and the hucksters of the royal city never gave her near so good a price for her cheese as Leddy Grippy regularly received for hers, although, in the process of the making, they both followed the same recipes.

The conjugal felicities of Walter afforded, however, but little pleasure to his father. The obstreperous humours of his daughter-in-law jarred with his sedate dispositions, and in her fun and freaks she so loudly showed her thorough knowledge of her husband’s defective intellects, that it for ever reminded him of the probable indignation with which the world would one day hear of the injustice he had done to Charles. The effect of this gradually led him to shun the society of his own family, and having neither from nature nor habit any inclination for general company, he became solitary and morose. He only visited Glasgow once a week, on Wednesday, and generally sat about an hour in the shop, in his old elbow-chair, in the corner; and, saving a few questions relative to the business, he abstained from conversing with his son. It would seem, however, that, under this sullen taciturnity, the love which he had once cherished for Charles still tugged at his heart; for, happening to come into the shop, on the morning after Isabella had made him a grandfather, by the birth of a boy, on being informed of that happy event, he shook his son warmly by the hand, and said, in a serious and impressive manner,—

‘An it please God, Charlie, to gie thee ony mair childer, I redde thee, wi’ the counsel o’ a father, to mak na odds among them, but remember they are a’ alike thine, and that t’ou canna prefer ane aboon anither without sin;’—and he followed this admonition with a gift of twenty pounds to buy the infant a christening frock.

But from that day he never spoke to Charles of his family; on the contrary, he became dark and more obdurate in his manner to every one around him. His only enjoyment seemed to be a sort of doating delight in contemplating, from a rude bench which he had constructed on a rising ground behind the house of Grippy, the surrounding fields of his forefathers. There he would sit for hours together alone, bending forward with his chin resting on the ivory head of his staff, which he held between his knees by both hands, and with a quick and eager glance survey the scene for a moment, and then drop his eyelids and look only on the ground.

Whatever might be the general tenor of his reflections as he sat on that spot, they were evidently not always pleasant; for one afternoon, as he was sitting there, his wife, who came upon him suddenly and unperceived, to tell him a messenger was sent to Glasgow from Divethill for the midwife, was surprised to find him agitated and almost in tears.

‘Dear me, gudeman,’ said she, ‘what’s come o’er you, that ye’re sitting here hanging your gruntel like a sow playing on a trump? Hae na ye heard that Betty Bodle’s time’s come? I’m gaun ower to the crying, and if ye like ye may walk that length wi’ me. I hope, poor thing, she’ll hae an easy time o’t, and that we’ll hae blithes-meat before the sun gangs doun.’

‘Gang the gait thysel, Girzy Hypel,’ said Claud, raising his head, ‘and no fash me with thy clishmaclavers.’

‘Heh, gudeman! but ye hae been eating sourrocks instead o’ lang-kail. But e’en’s ye like, Meg dorts, as “Patie and Rodger” says, I can gang mysel;’ and with that, whisking pettishly round, she walked away.

Claud being thus disturbed in his meditations, looked after her as she moved along the footpath down the slope, and for the space of a minute or two, appeared inclined to follow her, but relapsing into some new train of thought, before she had reached the bottom, he had again resumed his common attitude, and replaced his chin on the ivory head of his staff.