We therefore commit
that eminent person to his night's repose, trusting he profited by the
ample preparations made for his accommodation--preparations which we
have mentioned in detail, as illustrative of ancient Scottish manners.
It is not necessary we should be equally minute in describing the
sleeping apartment of the Master of Ravenswood, which was that usually
occupied by the goodman and goodwife themselves. It was comfortably
hung with a sort of warm-coloured worsted, manufactured in Scotland,
approaching in trexture to what is now called shalloon. A staring
picture of John [Gibbie] Girder himself ornamented this dormiory,
painted by a starving Frenchman, who had, God knows how or why, strolled
over from Flushing or Dunkirk to Wolf's Hope in a smuggling dogger. The
features were, indeed, those of the stubborn, opinionative, yet sensible
artisan, but Monsieur had contrived to throw a French grace into the
look and manner, so utterly inconsistent with the dogged gravity of the
original, that it was impossible to look at it without laughing. John
and his family, however, piqued themselves not a little upon this
picture, and were proportionably censured by the neighbourhood, who
pronounced that the cooper, in sitting for the same, and yet more in
presuming to hang it up in his bedchamber, had exceeded his privilege as
the richest man of the village; at once stept beyond the bounds of his
own rank, and encroached upon those of the superior orders; and,
in fine, had been guilty of a very overweening act of vanity and
presumption.
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