a bonny bride's sune buskit; eh, nanny swinton?"
"but ye're no bonny, miss nelly; na, na, ye cannot fill the shoon o' yer leddy mother; ye're snod, and ye may shak yer tails at the assembly, but ye're far ahint lady carnegie."
"an' i've but to dance my set with young berwickshire home, i care not though i bide at home after all."
but nelly carnegie would have little liked that resource, though she now flung the powder out of her nut-brown hair, and tapped her little mirror with her fan.
in a low dark closet, up a steep stair, in a narrow, confined, dark-browed house in the canongate of edinburgh, one of the belles of 17—made her toilette. her chamber woman, in curch and tartan screen, was old nurse and sole domestic of the high-headed, strong-minded, stately widow of a wild north-country laird, whose son now ruled alone in the rugged family mansion among the grand, misty mountains of lochaber. nelly carnegie was no beauty; [page 168]not fair as a red-and-white rose, like lady eglinton, or any one of her six daughters; not dainty, like poor imprisoned lady lovat; she was more like desperate lady primrose, flying shrieking from her mad husband's sword and pistols, or fierce lady grange, swearing her bootless revenge on the wily, treacherous, scared lord of session. she was but wild, witty nelly carnegie, whom no precise, stern mother could tame, no hard life at her embroidery or her spinet could subdue. she was brown as a gipsy, skin, eyes, and hair—the last a rich, ruddy chestnut brown—with nothing to distinguish her figure but its diminutiveness and the nimbleness of the shapely hands and feet; while her mother's lace lappets were higher by half a foot than the crown of many a manikin on whom she looked down, and her back that never bent or leant for a second on rail or cushion, was straight as an arrow, as well as long. but nelly, in her absurd, magnificent brocade, and her hoop, that made her small figure like a little russet cask, and with busk and breast-knot and top-knot, was admired, as odd people will choose what is irregular, strange, and racy, in preference to what is harmonious, orderly, and insipid.
