]
The Baron, whose voice was drowned in the louder and more obstreperous
strains of Balmawhapple, now dropped the competition, but continued to
hum, Lon, Lon, Laridon, and to regard the successful candidate for the
attention of the company, with an eye of disdain, while Balmawhapple
proceeded,--
If up a bonny black-cock should spring,
To whistle him down wi' a slug in his wing,
And strap him on to my lunzie string,
Right seldom would I fail.
After an ineffectual attempt to recover the second verse, he sang the
first over again; and, in prosecution of his triumph, declared there was
'more sense in that than in all the DERRY-DONGS of France, and Fifeshire
to the boot of it.' The Baron only answered with a long pinch of snuff,
and a glance of infinite contempt. But those noble allies, the Bear and
the Hen, had emancipated the young laird from the habitual reverence
in which he held Bradwardine at other times. He pronounced the claret
SHILPIT, and demanded brandy with great vociferation. It was brought;
and now the Demon of Politics envied even the harmony arising from
this Dutch concert, merely because there was not a wrathful note in the
strange compound of sounds which it produced.
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