In this manner,
hating and contemning commerce, and those who pursued it, he
nevertheless lived a good deal among the Scottish artists and
merchants, who had followed the Court to London. To these he could
show his cynicism without much offence; for some submitted to his
jeers and ill-humour in deference to his birth and knighthood, which
in those days conferred high privileges--and others, of more sense,
pitied and endured the old man, unhappy alike in his fortunes and his
temper.
Amongst the latter was George Heriot, who, though his habits and
education induced him to carry aristocratical feelings to a degree
which would now be thought extravagant, had too much spirit and good
sense to permit himself to be intruded upon to an unauthorized excess,
or used with the slightest improper freedom, by such a person as Sir
Mungo, to whom he was, nevertheless, not only respectfully civil, but
essentially kind, and even generous.
Accordingly, this appeared from the manner in which Sir Mungo
Malagrowther conducted himself upon entering the apartment. He paid
his respects to Master Heriot, and a decent, elderly, somewhat severe-
looking female, in a coif, who, by the name of Aunt Judith, did the
honours of his house and table, with little or no portion of the
supercilious acidity, which his singular physiognomy assumed when he
made his bow successively to David Ramsay and the two sober citizens.
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