ss o' 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 aggression 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 a