“Since I received your letter I have been on the look-out for a companion for you, and have now the pleasure to send one bred at Abbotsford of a famous race. His name has hitherto been Cribb, but you may change it if you please. I will undertake for his doing execution upon the rats, which Polton was well stocked with when I knew it some seventeen or eighteen years ago. You must take some trouble to attach Mr Cribb, otherwise he will form low connexions in the kitchen, which are not easily broken off. The best and most effectual way is to feed him yourself for a few days.
“I congratulate you heartily, my good old friend, on
your look-forward to domestic walks and a companion of this sort; and I have no
doubt your health will gradually be confirmed by it. I will take an early
opportunity to see you when we return to Edinburgh. I like the banks of the
Esk, which to me are full of many remembrances, among which those relating to
poor Leyden must come home to you as
well as to me. I am ranging in my improvements painting my baronial hall with
all the scutcheons of the Border clans, and many similar devices. For the
roof-tree I tried to blazon my own quarterings, and succeeded easily with eight
on my father’s side; but on my mother’s side I stuck fast at the
mother of my great-great-grandfather. The ancestor himself was John
Rutherford of Grundisnock, which is an appanage of the Hunthill
estate, and he was married to Isabel Ker of Bloodylaws. I
think I have heard that either this John of Grundisnock or
his father was one of the nine sons of the celebrated Cock of
Hunthill, who seems to have had a reasonable brood of chickens.
Do you know any thing of the pedigree of the Hunt-
| APRIL, 1824. | 345 |
