yours; and if ye let me gang on quietly, I'se be moderate in my banquet; but if ye contradict me, deil but I dress ye a dinner fit for a duke!"Ravenswood, in fact, thought it would be best to let his officious butler run on, who proceeded to enumerate upon his fingers--"No muckle provision--might hae served four persons of honour,--first course, capons in white broth--roast kid--bacon with reverence; second course, roasted leveret--butter crabs--a veal florentine; third course, blackcock--it's black eneugh now wi' the sute--plumdamas--a tart--a flam--and some nonsense sweet things, adn comfits--and that's a'," he said, seeing the impatience of his master--"that's just a' was o't--forbye the apples and pears."Miss Ashton had by degrees gathered her spirits, so far as to pay some attention to what was going on; and observing the restrained impatience of Ravenswood, contrasted with the peculiar determination of manner with which Caleb detailed his imaginary banquet, the whole struck her as so ridiculous that, despite every effort to the contrary, she burst into a fit of incontrollable laughter, in which she was joined by her father, though with more moderation, and finally by the Master of Ravenswood himself, though conscious that the jest was at his own expense. Their mirth--for a scene which we read with little emotion often appears extremely ludicrous to the spectators--made the old vault ring again. They ceased--they renewed--they ceased--they renewed again their shouts of laughter! Caleb, in the mean time, stood his ground with a grave, angry, and scornful dignity, which greatly enhanced the ridicule of the scene and mirth of the spectators.
At length, when the voices, and nearly the strength, of the laughers were exhausted, he exclaimed, with very little ceremony:
"The deil's in the gentles! they breakfast sae lordly, that the loss of the best dinner ever cook pat fingers to makes them as merry as if it were the best jeest in a' George Buchanan. If there was as little in your honours' wames as there is in Caleb Balderstone's, less caickling wad serve ye on sic a gravaminous subject."Caleb's blunt expression of resentment again awakened the mirth of the company, which, by the way, he regarded not only as an agression upon the dignity of the family, but a special contempt of the eloquence with which he himself had summed up the extent of their supposed losses. "A description of a dinner," as he said afterwards to Mysie, "that wad hae made a fu' man hungry, and them to sit there laughing at it!""But," said Miss Ashton, composing her countenance as well as she could, "are all these delicacies so totally destroyed that no scrap can be collected?""Collected, my leddy! what wad ye collect out of the sute and the ass? Ye may gang down yoursell, and look into our kitchen--the cookmaid in the trembling exies--the gude vivers lying a'
about--beef, capons, and white broth--florentine and flams--bacon wi' reverence--and a' the sweet confections and whim-whams--ye'll see them a', my leddy--that is," said he, correcting himself, "ye'll no see ony of them now, for the cook has soopit them up, as was weel her part; but ye'll see the white broth where it was spilt. I pat my fingers in it, and it tastes as like sour milk as ony thing else; if that isna the effect of thunner, I kenna what is. This gentleman here couldna but hear the clash of our haill dishes, china and silver thegither?"The Lord Keeper's domestic, though a statesman's attendant, and of course trained to command his countenance upon all occasions, was somewhat discomposed by this appeal, to which he only answered by a bow.
