Scotch Marriages, Volume 1 by Sarah Tytler

Jenny made use of Johnnie Fuggie and employed him in her aim. Her / motive here was twofold. Johnnie was a person interested in Peggy's / kindred making their own out of Peggy, since she had become a powerful / woman with favours in her right hand. It was better for all concerned / that there should be a safe understanding rather than a dangerous feud / between the rival claimants for young Mrs. Ramsay's bounties. In other / respects Johnnie himself was a despicable object to Jenny -- a crouse, / clavering carle, up in years, with a silly wife and family keeping / him down. But Johnnie's relations were not all detrimentals. He had / a spruce, pushing nephew, who had risen to be a commercial traveller / for ‘a big Edinburgh house in the drapery line. ' This nephew was / considerably younger than Jenny, therefore flattered by her notice, / while the disparity in years did not prevent her from making sheep's / eyes at him.

The double inducement caused Jenny to be particularly attentive to / Johnnie Fuggie, who was even more taken in by her graciousness than / his nephew had yet proved himself. If the innocent man had known it, / she wished that Johnnie should be art and part in her manœuvres and / aggressions. Her clever tactics were to compromise everybody all round, / and when each person was deeply involved, to rule the roast, and play / her own winning game by means of her accomplices.

One afternoon, in the end of April, when the weather was unusually warm / for a Scotch spring, so that the gooseberry bushes were covered with / their pale green blossom, and there was a fine sprinkling of red and / lilac ‘spinks' (polyanthuses) and white daisies already brightening the / garden borders, Jenny come coolly into the dining-room at Drumsheugh, / followed slowly by Johnnie Fuggie in his corduroys, velveteen jacket, / and woollen comforter, which he wore summer and winter.

Johnnie had the grace to pause, glance ruefully at his earth-laden / feet, and even execute half a scrape of a bow on the threshold. He was / a small, rickety-looking man, with a slight halt in his gait -- more / perceptible in his fatigue. He was not wont to be troubled with / scruples, still he hung back a little.

But Jenny explained his presence there volubly. ‘It's Johnnie, / cuzin Peggy,' she said, with a wave of the hand to the unanswerable / proposition and unnecessary introduction. ‘He has been a' the way to / the Knockruddery planting for pea-sticks, and has carriet them hame, / the gomerel, on his back instead of ordering a cart from the offices, / though Balcairnie could not ha'e said strae to that. Johnnie, puir / chap, is clean forfochten, as ye may see, with the long walk and / the load; sae, as he would ha'e needed to gang round by the Cotton / to slocken his drouth, I ha'e just brocht him in here to eat his / fower hours, but ceremony wi' you and me. I ha'e telled Cunnings in / the by-going, and gin you'll send her the keys, she'll bring in the / Hollands and yale wi' the dishes o' tea, which are no for a man's / refreshment. Sit ye doon, Johnnie, my man; dinna be blate, rest ye, and / mak yoursel' at hame in the muckle chair in your ain cuzin's hoose.'

He was her own cousin, once or twice removed, and Peggy would willingly / have given him of her best for his rest and refreshment; but Johnny / Fuggie in Drumsheugh's absence in the laird's chair at his table, was / what she could not authorise, whether or not she had strength of mind / to forbid it. She stood up, trembling from head to foot, growing very / pale, and gasping for breath.

Johnnie took pity upon her. The girl's tremor still farther abashed / instead of emboldening him. It reached even through his coarse and / thick skin.

‘Na, Jenny, ye're wrang, lass, this time,' he mumbled. ‘This is no' / the place for me. I couldna be comfortable, ony mair than ither folk / could be. Gude e'en to you, young Mistress Ramsay, mem, I give you a' / your titles wi' a' my heart. I'll gang my ways and you'll forgie this / mischanter. It is a' the wyte o' this sorry Jenny. She means weel, but / her frien'liness runs awa' wi' her at times.'

‘You'll no gang out o' this house without tasting for the house's ain / credit, Johnnie Fuggie; no' sae lang as I'm to the fore and under / its roof, though I suld ha'e to set up a bottle and a kebbock wi' / a fardel o' cakes on my ain account, as I have never needed to do / yet,' protested Jenny clamorously. ‘Na, I'll tell you what,' with the / ready adaptation of her scheme to circumstances which is the gift of / first-rate conspirators, and is for that matter an attribute of genius, / ‘we'll sally but to Cunnings's room, if the dining-room flegs you, and / I'm sure Peggy will not refuse to grace us wi' her presence.'

Poor Peggy caught at the compromise, overlooking the sneer scarcely / hidden under Jenny's accommodating suggestion. She would cheerfully / bear her relations company in the housekeeper's room for half-an-hour, / if that would keep them out of Drumsheugh's dining-room or the Lady's / drawing-room.

Peggy little guessed that the visit was destined to be often repeated, / till it became almost a daily occurrence, brought about, as it / was, by Jenny's determined, deliberate design, Johnnie's sloth and / folly, Cunnings's desperate self-indulgence, and Peggy's humility and / incapacity.