"
"You need not doubt my doing my best in Nigel's case," answered Lord
Dalgarno; "but you must think, my dear father, I must needs use slower
and gentler means than those by which you became a favourite twenty
years ago."
"By my faith, I am afraid thou wilt," answered his father.--"I tell
thee, Malcolm, I would sooner wish myself in the grave, than doubt
thine honesty or honour; yet somehow it hath chanced, that honest,
ready service, hath not the same acceptance at Court which it has in
my younger time--and yet you rise there."
"O, the time permits not your old-world service," said Lord Dalgarno;
"we have now no daily insurrections, no nightly attempts at
assassination, as were the fashion in the Scottish Court. Your prompt
and uncourteous sword-in-hand attendance on the sovereign is no longer
necessary, and would be as unbeseeming as your old-fashioned serving-
men, with their badges, broadswords, and bucklers, would be at a
court-mask. Besides, father, loyal haste hath its inconveniences. I
have heard, and from royal lips too, that when you stuck your dagger
into the traitor Ruthven, it was with such little consideration, that
the point ran a quarter of an inch into the royal buttock. The king
never talks of it but he rubs the injured part, and quotes his
_'infandum-------renovare dolorem.'_ But this comes of old fashions,
and of wearing a long Liddesdale whinger instead of a poniard of
Parma.
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