Mr. Jeffrey now inquired what the people in her part of the
country thought of the trial of the Queen. She could not tell
him, but she would say what she herself had remarked on siclike
proceedings: "Tak' a wreath of snaw, let it be never so white,
and wash it through clean water, it will no come out so pure as
it gaed in, far less the dirty dubs the poor Queen has been
drawn through."
Mr. Russell inquired if she possessed any relics of Prince
Charles from the time he used to spin with the lasses:--
"Yes," she said, "I have a _flech_ that loupit aff him upon my
aunty, the Lady Brax, when she was helping him on wi' his
short-gown; my aunty rowed it up in a sheet of white paper, and
she keepit it in the tea canister, and she ca'd it aye the
King's Flech; and the laird, honest man, when he wanted a cup of
gude tea, sought aye a cup of the _Prince's mixture_." This
produced peals of laughter, and her ladyship laughed as heartily
as any of them. When somewhat composed again, she looked across
the table to Mr. Clerk, and offered to let him see it. "It is
now set on the pivot of my watch, and a' the warks gae round the
_flech_ in place of turning on a diamond."
Lord Gillies thought this flight would certainly betray her, and
remarked to Mr. Clerk that the flea must be painted on the
watch, but Mr. Clerk said he had known of relics being kept of
the Prince quite as extraordinary as a flea; that Mr. Murray of
Simprim had a pocket-handkerchief in which Prince Charles had
blown his nose.
The Lady Pitlyal said her daughter did not value these things,
and that she was resolved to leave it as a legacy to the
Antiquarian Society.
Holmehead was rather amused with her originality, though he had
not forgotten the attack. He said he would try if she was a real
Jacobite, and he called out, "Madam, I am going to propose a
toast for ye!
"May the Scotch Thistle choke the Hanoverian Horse."
"I wish I binna among the Whigs," she said.
"And whare wad ye be sae weel?" retorted he.
"They murdered Dundee's son at Glasgow."
"There was nae great skaith," he replied; "but ye maun drink my
toast in a glass of this cauld punch, if ye be a true Jacobite."
"Aweel, aweel," said the Lady Pitlyal; "as my auld friend Lady
Christian Bruce was wont to say, 'The best way to get the better
of temptation is just to yield to it;'" and as she nodded to the
toast and emptied the glass, Holmehead swore
exultingly--"_Faith, she's true!_"
Supper passed over, and the carriages were announced. The Lady
Pitlyal took her leave with Mrs. Gillies.
Next day the town rang with the heiress of Pitlyal. Mr. W. Clerk
said he had never met with such an extraordinary old lady, "for
not only is she amusing herself, but my brother John is like to
expire, when I relate her stories at second-hand."
He talked of nothing else for a week after, but the heiress, and
the flea, and the rent-roll, and the old turreted house of
Pitlyal, till at last his friends thought it would be right to
undeceive him; but that was not so easily done, for when the
Lord Chief-Commissioner Adam hinted that it might be Miss
Stirling, he said that was impossible, for Miss Stirling was
sitting by the old lady the whole of the evening.