"These citizen chuffs and clowns
will press in amongst us, when there is but an inch of a door open.
And what remedy?--Just e'en this, that as their cash gies them
confidence, we should strip them of it. Flay them, my lord--singe them
as the kitchen wench does the rats, and then they winna long to come
back again.--Ay, ay--pluck them, plume them--and then the larded
capons will not be for flying so high a wing, my lord, among the goss-
hawks and sparrow-hawks, and the like."
And, therewithal, Sir Mungo fixed on Nigel his quick, sharp, grey eye,
watching the effect of his sarcasm as keenly as the surgeon, in a
delicate operation, remarks the progress of his anatomical scalpel.
Nigel, however willing to conceal his sensations, could not avoid
gratifying his tormentor by wincing under the operation. He coloured
with vexation and anger; but a quarrel with Sir Mungo Malagrowther
would, he felt, be unutterably ridiculous; and he only muttered to
himself the words, "Impertinent coxcomb!" which, on this occasion, Sir
Mungo's imperfection of organ did not prevent him from hearing and
replying to.
"Ay, ay--vera true," exclaimed the caustic old courtier--"Impertinent
coxcombs they are, that thus intrude themselves on the society of
their betters; but your lordship kens how to gar them as gude--ye have
the trick on't.--They had a braw sport in the presence last Friday,
how ye suld have routed a young shopkeeper, horse and foot, ta'en his
_spolia ofima_, and a' the specie he had about him, down to the very
silver buttons of his cloak, and sent him to graze with
Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon.
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