The Return

Mr. Snodgrass, after enjoying his dinner society with Miss Mally and Miss
Isabella, thought it necessary to dispatch a courier, in the shape of a
barefooted servant lass, to Mr. Micklewham, to inform the elders that the
Doctor was expected home in time for tea, leaving it to their discretion
either to greet his safe return at the manse, or in any other form or
manner that would be most agreeable to themselves. These important news
were soon diffused through the clachan. Mr. Micklewham dismissed his
school an hour before the wonted time, and there was a universal interest
and curiosity excited, to see the Doctor coming home in his own coach.
All the boys of Garnock assembled at the braehead which commands an
extensive view of the Kilmarnock road, the only one from Glasgow that
runs through the parish; the wives with their sucklings were seated on
the large stones at their respective door-cheeks; while their cats were
calmly reclining on the window soles. The lassie weans, like clustering
bees, were mounted on the carts that stood before Thomas Birlpenny the
vintner's door, churming with anticipated delight; the old men took their
stations on the dike that incloses the side of the vintner's kail-yard,
and "a batch of wabster lads," with green aprons and thin yellow faces,
planted themselves at the gable of the malt kiln, where they were wont,
when trade was better, to play at the hand-ball; but, poor fellows, since
the trade fell off, they have had no heart for the game, and the
vintner's half-mutchkin stoups glitter in empty splendour unrequired on
the shelf below the brazen sconce above the bracepiece, amidst the idle
pewter pepper-boxes, the bright copper tea-kettle, the coffee-pot that
has never been in use, and lids of saucepans that have survived their
principals,--the wonted ornaments of every trig change-house kitchen.