On Sundays he is the beadle of our church; at other times he Waits. In his ecclesiastical character there is a solemn dignity about his deportment that compels most of us to call him Mr MacPherson; in his secular hours, when passing the fruit at a city banquet, or when at the close of the repast he sweeps away the fragments of the dinner-rolls, and whisperingly expresses in your left ear a fervent hope that “ye’ve enjoyed your dinner,” he is simply Erchie.
Once I forgot, deluded a moment into a Sunday train of thought by his reverent way of laying down a bottle of Pommery, and called him Mr MacPherson. He reproved me with a glance of his eye.
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“Whit’s wanted is a kin’ o’ slidin’ scale o’ sentiment on Christmas cairds, so that they’ll taper doon frae a herty greetin’ ye can truthfully send to a dacent auld freen’ and the kind o’ cool ‘here’s to ye!’ suited for an acquaintance that borrowed five shillin’s frae ye at the Term, and hasna much chance o’ ever payin’t back again.
“If it wasna for the Christmas cairds a lot o’ us wad maybe never jalouse there was onything parteecular merry aboot the season. Every man that ye’re owin’ an accoont to sends it to ye then, thinkin’ your hert’s warm and your pouches rattlin’. On Christmas Day itsel’ ye’re aye expectin’ something; ye canna richt tell whit it is, but there’s ae thing certain – that it never comes. Jinnet, my wife, made a breenge for the door every time the post knocked on Thursday, and a’ she had for’t at the end o’ the day was an ashet fu’ o’ whit she ca’s valenteens, a’ written on so that they’ll no even dae for next year.
