He was no sooner, however, seated, than with an unusual exertion of his powers of conversation, he added, "Jeanie--I say, Jeanie, woman"-- here he extended his hand towards her shoulder with all the fingers spread out as if to clutch it, but in so bashful and awkward a manner, that when she whisked herself beyond its reach, the paw remained suspended in the air with the palm open, like the claw of a heraldic griffin--"Jeanie," continued the swain in this moment of inspiration--"I say, Jeanie, it's a braw day out-by, and the roads are no that ill for boot-hose." [Illustration: Jeanie--I say, Jeanie, woman--133 "The deil's in the daidling body," muttered Jeanie between her teeth; "wha wad hae thought o' his daikering out this length ?" And she afterwards confessed that she threw a little of this ungracious sentiment into her accent and manner; for her father being abroad, and the "body," as she irreverently termed the landed proprietor, "looking unco gleg and canty, she didna ken what he might be coming out wi' next." Her frowns, however, acted as a complete sedative, and the Laird relapsed from that day into his former taciturn habits, visiting the cowfeeder's cottage three or four times every week, when the weather permitted, with apparently no other purpose than to stare at Jeanie Deans, while Douce Davie poured forth his eloquence upon the controversies and testimonies of the day..