I may mention also that, in
consequence of the damp, this little bower was strewed with rushes for
the very special comfort of Miss Annie Yellowlees, the only and much
petted child of the good councillor.
All which you must take as introductory to the important fact that the
said Miss Annie, who, as a matter of course, was "very bonnie," as well
as passing rich to be, had been, somewhat previous to the prince's entry
to the town, pledged to be married to no less considerable a personage
than Maister John Menelaws, a son of him of the very same name who dealt
in pelts in a shop of the Canongate, and a student of medicine in the
Edinburgh University; but as the councillor had in his secret soul
hankerings after the prince, and the said student, John, was a red-hot
royalist, the marriage was suspended, all to the inexpressible grief of
our "bonnie Annie," who would not have given her John for all the
Charlies and Geordies to be found from Berwick to Lerwick. On the other
hand, while Annie was depressed, and forced to seek relief in solitary
musings in her bower by the loch, it is just as true that "it is an ill
wind that blaws naebody gude;" nay, the truth of the saying was verified
in Richard Templeton, a fellow-student of Menelaws, and a rival, too, in
the affections of Annie; who, being a Charlieite as well as an Annieite,
rejoiced that his companion was in the meantime foiled and disappointed.
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