"Weel, sirs!" said Mrs. Lightbody, "wha wad hae thought o' Caleb Balderstone playing an auld acquaintance sic a pliskie!"
"Oh, weary on him!" said the spouse of Mr. Girder; "and what am I to say to the gudeman? He'll brain me, if there wasna anither woman in a' Wolf''s Hope."
"Hout tout, silly quean," said the mother; "na, na, it's come to muckle, but it's no come to that neither; for an he brain you he maun brain me, and I have garr'd his betters stand back. Hands aff is fair play; we maunna heed a bit flyting."
The tramp of horses now announced the arrival of the cooper, with the minister. They had no sooner dismounted than they made for the kitchen fire, for the evening was cool after the thunderstorm, and the woods wet and dirty. The young gudewife, strong in the charms of her Sunday gown and biggonets, threw herself in the way of receiving the first attack, while her mother, like the veteran division of the Roman legion, remained in the rear, ready to support her in case of necessity. Both hoped to protract the discovery of what had happened—the mother, by interposing her bustling person betwixt Mr. Girder and the fire, and the daughter, by the extreme cordiality with which she received the minister and her husband, and the anxious fears which she expressed lest they should have "gotten cauld." "Cauld!" quoted the husband, surlily, for he was not of that class of lords and masters whose wives are viceroys over them, "we'll be cauld eneugh, I think, if ye dinna let us in to the fire."
And so saying, he burst his way through both lines of defence; and, as he had a careful eye over his property of every kind, he perceived at one glance the absence of the spit with its savoury burden. "What the deil, woman——"
"Fie for shame!" exclaimed both the women; "and before Mr. Bide-the-Bent!"
"I stand reproved," said the cooper; "but—"
"The taking in our mouths the name of the great enemy of our souls," said Mr. Bide-the-Bent—
"I stand reproved," said the cooper.
"—Is an exposing ourselves to his temptations," continued the reverend monitor, "and in inviting, or, in some sort, a compelling, of him to lay aside his other trafficking with unhappy persons, and wait upon those in whose speech his name is frequent."
"Weel, weel, Mr. Bide-the-Bent, can a man do mair than stand reproved?" said the cooper; "but jest let me ask the women what for they hae dished the wild-fowl before we came."
"They arena dished, Gilbert," said his wife; "but—but an accident——"
"What accident?" said Girder, with flashing eyes. "Nae ill come ower them, I trust? Uh?"
His wife, who stood much in awe of him, durst not reply, but her mother bustled up to her support, with arms disposed as if they were about to be a-kimbo at the next reply.—"I gied them to an acquaintance of mine, Gibbie Girder; and what about it now?"
Her excess of assurance struck Girder mute for an instant. "And YE gied the wild-fowl, the best end of our christening dinner, to a friend of yours, ye auld rudas! And what might HIS name be, I pray ye?"
"Just worthy Mr. Caleb Balderstone—frae Wolf's Crag," answered Marion, prompt and prepared for battle.
Girder's wrath foamed over all restraint. If there was a circumstance which could have added to the resentment he felt, it was that this extravagant donation had been made in favour of our friend Caleb, towards whom, for reasons to which the reader is no stranger, he nourished a decided resentment. He raised his riding-wand against the elder matron, but she stood firm, collected in herself, and undauntedly brandished the iron ladle with which she had just been "flambing" (Anglice, basting) the roast of mutton. Her weapon was certainly the better, and her arm not the weakest of the two; so that Gilbert thought it safest to turn short off upon his wife, who had by this time hatched a sort of hysterical whine, which greatly moved the minister, who was in fact as simple and kind-hearted a creature as ever breathed. "And you, ye thowless jade, to sit still and see my substance disponed upon to an idle, drunken, reprobate, worm-eaten serving-man, just because he kittles the lugs o' a silly auld wife wi' useless clavers, and every twa words a lee? I'll gar you as gude——"
Here the minister interposed, both by voice and action, while Dame Lightbody threw herself in front of her daughter, and flourished her ladle.
"Am I no to chastise my ain wife?" exclaimed the cooper very indignantly.
"Ye may chastise your ain wife if ye like," answered Dame Lightbody; "but ye shall never lay finger on my daughter, and that ye may found upon." "For shame, Mr. Girder!" said the clergyman; "this is what I little expected to have seen of you, that you suld give rein to your sinful passions against your nearest and your dearest, and this night too, when ye are called to the most solemn duty of a Christian parent; and a' for what? For a redundancy of creature-comforts, as worthless as they are unneedful."
"Worthless!" exclaimed the cooper. "A better guse never walkit on stubble; two finer, dentier wild ducks never wat a feather."
"Be it sae, neighbour," rejoined the minister; "but see what superfluities are yet revolving before your fire. I have seen the day when ten of the bannocks which stand upon that board would have been an acceptable dainty to as many men, that were starving on hills and bogs, and in caves of the earth, for the Gospel's sake."
"And that's what vexes me maist of a'," said the cooper, anxious to get some one to sympathise with his not altogether causeless anger; "an the quean had gien it to ony suffering sant, or to ony body ava but that reaving, lying, oppressing Tory villain, that rade in the wicked troop of militia when it was commanded out against the sants at Bothwell Brig by the auld tyrant Allan Ravenswood, that is gane to his place, I wad the less hae minded it. But to gie the principal parts o' the feast to the like o' him——!"
"Aweel, Gilbert," said the minister, "and dinna ye see a high judgment in this? The seed of the righteous are not seen begging their bread: think of the son of a powerful oppressor being brought to the pass of supporting his household from your fulness."
"And, besides," said the wife, "it wasna for Lord Ravenswood neither, an he wad hear but a body speak: it was to help to entertain the Lord Keeper, as they ca' him, that's up yonder at Wolf's Crag."
"Sir William Ashton at Wolf's Crag!" ejaculated the astonished man of hoops and staves.
"And hand and glove wi' Lord Ravenswood," added Dame Lightbody.
"Doited idiot! that auld, clavering sneckdrawer wad gar ye trow the moon is made of green cheese. The Lord Keeper and Ravenswood! they are cat and dog, hare and hound."
"I tell ye they are man and wife, and gree better than some others that are sae," retorted the mother-in-law; "forbye, Peter Puncheon, that's cooper the Queen's stores, is dead, and the place is to fill, and——"
"Od guide us, wull ye haud your skirling tongues!" said Girder,—for we are to remark, that this explanation was given like a catch for two voices, the younger dame, much encouraged by the turn of the debate, taking up and repeating in a higher tone the words as fast as they were uttered by her mother.
"The gudewife says naething but what's true, maister," said Girder's foreman, who had come in during the fray. "I saw the Lord Keeper's servants drinking and driving ower at Luckie Sma'trash's, ower-bye yonder."
"And is their maister up at Wolf's Crag?" said Girder.
"Ay, troth is he," replied his man of confidence.
"And friends wi' Ravenswood?"
"It's like sae," answered the foreman, "since he is putting up wi' him."
"And Peter Puncheon's dead?"
"Ay, ay, Puncheon has leaked out at last, the auld carle," said the foreman; "mony a dribble o' brandy has gaen through him in his day. But as for the broche and the wild-fowl, the saddle's no aff your mare yet, maister, and I could follow and bring it back, for Mr. Balderstone's no far aff the town yet."