Scotch Marriages, Volume 1 by Sarah Tytler

During the last century there was little real difference between / young Drumsheugh and young Balcairnie, the young laird and the young / yeoman,[1] who was also the laird's chief tenant and chosen friend. / Jamie Ramsay, of Drumsheugh, and Jock Home, of Balcairnie, both / rejoicing in a territorial appellation, had sat together on the same / bench in the same parish school. For that matter Jock, though not / particularly scholarly, as the cleverer of the two, had generally sat / above his companion. The boys had played together in the same games / of ball and hockey. In company they had scoured the fields together / after birds' nests, nuts, and haws. They had in their green youth worn / and torn the same corduroys little different in quality, and satisfied / their hearty appetites on the same wholesome porridge and kail, oatmeal / cakes, and ‘bannocks o' barley,' for the laird's table was not much / more daintily supplied than the farmer's.

Even the lads' homes were on the outside not so different as might / have been expected. Drumsheugh had an avenue of crazy fir trees, and / the dignity of a ruined tower about a bow-shot from the high, narrow, / free-stone house which represented the modern mansion. Balcairnie was / just such another house, a storey lower, without the avenue and the / tower. It was not destitute of compensation for these deficiencies in / the comfortable-looking stack-yard, which sheltered it from every / wind that blew, and in the square of the farmyard which abutted on / the house, and was alive and cheerful with domestic animals, and the / constant work going on among them. Balcairnie was the livelier dwelling / of the two. Both houses had long gardens very similar, prolific in / hardy vegetables and primitive fruit, as well as in old-fashioned / flowers. The gardens found room for umbrageous bowers and Dutch / summer-houses, and included beech and holly hedges, which enclosed / washing-greens.

Inside, the best parlour of Balcairnie might have stood for the / dining-room of Drumsheugh -- furnished as they both were with Scotch / carpets and oak, and adorned alike with silver cups, won in coursing / matches, and great Chinese punch-bowls brought home by friendly sea / captains. The chief difference lay in the fact that the dining-room / at Drumsheugh was in constant use, while the _pièce de résistance_ / among the apartments in Balcairnie was the ordinary parlour, given / over to drugget and blue-and-white checked linen, with ornaments of no / more costly material than cherry-wood pipes, pink-lipped shells, and / peacocks' feathers. Again, there was no drawing-room at Balcairnie, / with spindle-legged chairs in painted satin-wood and white chintz / covers, such as was the company room at Drumsheugh. But the boys' bare / little garret dormitories were much alike.

On the rare occasions, when the lads went from home, unattended by / their parents, they journeyed by one conveyance which served the whole / neighbourhood, except on special occasions -- Tam Fleemin's carrier's / cart.

True, on leaving school young Drumsheugh had gone to the Edinburgh / University, as became his birth and rank, while young Balcairnie had / entered on the apprenticeship implied in holding a plough and drawing a / straight furrow under the critical eyes of his father and his father's / foreman, according to the standard for young men in his class; but on / the return of the one lad from the college and the promotion of the / other on the death of his father to the possession of all the pairs of / horses on the farm, instead of the obligation to work one pair, the / occupations and amusements of the old allies tallied once more at many / points.

Young Drumsheugh -- young only in years, for his father had died long / before Balcairnie's father, and the laird had grown up under the rule / of a widowed mother -- was a scion of the great house of Dalwolsie, the / representative of a family of respectable though not very wealthy / country gentry that had held up their heads among their equals for the / last three hundred years at least. Young Balcairnie, though his father, / grandfather and great-grandfather had been tenants of Balcairnie as / long as the oldest living man in the neighbourhood could recollect, / knew nothing further of his origin than what was to be deciphered on / a few mossy stones leaning over in Craigture kirk yard. These did not / condescend to mention whether the Homes of Balcairnie came of the great / Berwickshire Homes or not. The rude, half-effaced letters only gave / the brief, if graphic, statement that here lay ‘the cauld corp' of / ‘Dauvit,' or Alexander, or John Home, as it might be.

But blue blood must have spoken out very unmistakably, if it had drawn / a sharp line between two lads whose rearing, casts of mind, tastes and / pursuits were so much in common. For the laird farmed the home farm, / and the yeoman was one of the first in the hunting field, though he / did not attend the hunt ball. The young men, like the boys, wore as a / rule the same every-day suits -- no longer of corduroy, but of home-spun. / Good brown woollen stuff, shorn, spun, and woven in the district, / diversified by yellow buckskins, boots and tops, red waistcoats, / and three-cornered hats. The manly build of the pair rivalled each / that of the other. Both were deep-chested, broad-shouldered, long / and clean-limbed, with arms, not unused to fencing and boxing, quite / capable of keeping the owners' heads. The corresponding legs came out / strong at coursing matches without the aid of riding horses, while / the feet beat the floor resoundingly in reels and country dances for / well-nigh a round of the clock at every merry-making, great and small, / far and near. The comely ruddy faces under the three-cornered hats / might almost have been those of brothers, except that Drumsheugh was / dark and Balcairnie fair in hair and complexion.