One thing I had determined in my own mind, and that was, that he should never with my will go abroad.

The gentry are no doubt philosophers enough to bring up their bairns like sheep to the slaughter, and dispatch them as cadies to Bengal and the Cape of Good Hope, as soon as they are grown up; when, lo and behold! the first news they hear of them is in a letter, sealed with black wax, telling how they died of the liver complaint, and were buried by six blacks two hours after.
That was one thing settled and sealed, so no more need be said about it; yet, notwithstanding of Nanse's being satisfied that the spaewife was a deceitful gipsy, perfectly untrustworthy, she would aye have a finger in the pie, and try to persuade me in a coaxing way.

"I'm sure," she would say, "ane with half an e'e may see that our son Benjie has just the physog of an admiral.

It's a great shame contradicting nature." "Po, po," answered I, "woman, ye dinna ken what ye're saying.

Do ye imagine that, if he were made a sea-admiral, we could ever live to have any comfort in the son of our bosom?
Would he not, think ye, be obliged with his ship to sail the salt seas, through foul weather and fair; and, when he met the French, to fight, hack, and hew them down, lith and limb, with grape-shot and cutlass; till some unfortunate day or other, after having lost a leg and an arm in the service, he is felled as dead as a door-nail, with a cut and thrust over the crown, by some furious rascal that saw he was off his guard, glowring with his blind e'e another way ?--Ye speak havers, Nanse; what are all the honours of this world worth?
No worth this pinch of snuff I have between my finger and thumb--no worth a bodle, if we never saw our Benjie again, but he was aye ranging and rampauging far abroad, shedding human blood; and when we could only aye dream about him in our sleep, as one that was wandering night and day blindfold, down the long, dark, lampless avenue of destruction, and destined never more to visit Dalkeith again, except with a wooden stump and a brass virl, or to have his head blown off his shoulders, mast high, like ingan peelings, with some exploding earthquake of combustible gunpowder .-- Call in the laddie, I say, and see what he would like to be himsell." Nanse ran but the house, and straightway brought Benjie, who was playing at the bools, ben by the lug and horn.