Her sense of
the awful was nowise to be measured by the degree of her dread: she
believed and did not fear--much. She had an instinctive
consciousness that a woman ought to be, and might be, and was a
match for the devil.
"I am sorry we have no coffee for your lordship," said the laird,
"To tell the truth, we seldom take anything more than our country's
porridge. I hope you can take tea? Our Grizzie's scons are good,
with plenty of butter."
His lordship had in the meantime taken another pull at the
brandy-flask, and was growing more and more polite.
"The man would be hard to please," he said, "who would not be
enticed to eat by such a display of good victuals. Tea for me,
before everything!--How am I to pretend to swallow the stuff?" he
murmured, rather than muttered, to himself.--"But," he went on
aloud, "didn't that cheating rascal leave you--"
He stopped abruptly, and the laird saw his eyes fixed upon
something on the table, and following their look, saw it was a
certain pepper-pot, of odd device--a piece of old china, in the
shape of a clumsily made horse, with holes between the ears for the
issue of the pepper.
"I see, my lord," he said, "you are amused with the pepper-pot. It
is a curious utensil, is it not? It has been in the house a long
time--longer than anybody knows. Which of my great-grandmothers let
it take her fancy, it is impossible to say; but I suppose the
reason for its purchase, if not its manufacture, was, that a horse
passant has been the crest of our family from time immemorial.
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