old voluptuary, contented with sound wine and plenty of it. But there

were moments when he overflowed. Perhaps half a dozen times in the

history of his married life - "Here! tak' it awa', and bring me a piece

bread and kebbuck!" he had exclaimed, with an appalling explosion of his

voice and rare gestures. None thought to dispute or to make excuses;

the service was arrested; Mrs. Weir sat at the head of the table

whimpering without disguise; and his lordship opposite munched his bread

and cheese in ostentatious disregard. Once only, Mrs. Weir had ventured

to appeal. He was passing her chair on his way into the study.

"O, Edom!" she wailed, in a voice tragic with tears, and reaching out to

him both hands, in one of which she held a sopping pocket-handkerchief.

He paused and looked upon her with a face of wrath, into which there

stole, as he looked, a twinkle of humour.

"Noansense!" he said. "You and your noansense! What do I want with a

Christian faim'ly? I want Christian broth! Get me a lass that can

plain-boil a potato, if she was a whure off the streets." And with

these words, which echoed in her tender ears like blasphemy, he had

passed on to his study and shut the door behind him.

Such was the housewifery in George Square. It was better at Hermiston,

where Kirstie Elliott, the sister of a neighbouring bonnet-laird, and an

eighteenth cousin of the lady's, bore the charge of all, and kept a trim

house and a good country table. Kirstie was a woman in a thousand,

clean, capable, notable; once a moorland Helen, and still comely as a

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