Samuel Crockett - Cleg Kelly, Arab of the City - His Progress and Adventures

"Only Miss Tennant – a freend o' mine," said Cleg, with incomparable meekness and deference.

"Miss Tennant of Aurelia Villa?" broke in the eager youth.

"Aye, juist her," said Cleg dispassionately. "She learns us aboot Jacob and Esau – and aboot Noah," he added as if upon consideration. He would have mentioned more of the patriarchs if he could have remembered them at the time. His choice of names did not spring from either preference or favouritism. So he added Noah to show that there was no ill-feeling in the matter.

"And Miss Tennant is your friend?" queried the young man.

Cleg nodded. He might have added that sometimes, as in one great ploy yet to be described, he had been both teacher and friend to Miss Celie Tennant.

"Tell your lassie to be here at breakfast-time to-morrow morning, and to be sure and ask for Mr. Donald Iverach," was all the junior partner remarked.

And Cleg said demurely, "Thank you, sir."

But as Cleg went out he thought a great deal of additional matter, and when he said his adieus to the watchman he could hardly contain himself. Before he was fairly down the steps, he yelled three times as loud as he could, and turned Catherine-wheel after Catherine-wheel, till at the last turn he came down with his bare feet in the waist-belt of a policeman. The good-natured officer solemnly smacked the convenient end of Cleg with a vast plantigrade palm, and restored him to the stature and progression of ordinary humanity, with a reminder to behave – and to mind where he was coming if he did not want to get run in.

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The Stickit Minister , 10th edition, p. 153.

Trust.