There sat Archie, an apparent prince,
the only undeniable gentleman and the only great heritor in the parish,
taking his ease in the only pew, for no other in the kirk had doors.
Thence he might command an undisturbed view of that congregation of
solid plaided men, strapping wives and daughters, oppressed children,
and uneasy sheep-dogs. It was strange how Archie missed the look of
race; except the dogs, with their refined foxy faces and inimitably
curling tails, there was no one present with the least claim to
gentility. The Cauldstaneslap party was scarcely an exception; Dandie
perhaps, as he amused himself making verses through the interminable
burden of the service, stood out a little by the glow in his eye and a
certain superior animation of face and alertness of body; but even
Dandie slouched like a rustic. The rest of the congregation, like so
many sheep, oppressed him with a sense of hob-nailed routine, day
following day - of physical labour in the open air, oatmeal porridge,
peas bannock the somnolent fireside in the evening, and the night-long
nasal slumbers in a box-bed.
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