lued at a hundred thousand guineas--and to think of
all that being held in a little box! There is one necklace worth fifteen
thousand itself."

"And yet a small neck, too, maybe?--'And thou shalt make a necklace to
fit her neck,' said the Lord. It would not be half the girth of yours,
Mrs. M'Pherson?"

"Ay, Aminadab; not a half, nor anything like it. But don't stop me
again, lad, or I'll stop the pork. (A pause.) Ah, well, I fear it was
the shining jewels, and not the black face, did the business on my
master's side. And, of course, he would be all smiles at the Nabob's
court; for, Aminadab, my lad, there never was on the face of God's earth
a man who could so soon change the horrid dark scowl into the very light
of sunshine as Mr. Fletcher. I have seen him, when in company with
Kincaldrum, and Dudhope, and Gleneagles, and the rest, laughing till his
face was as red as the sun, then, all of a sudden, when some of his
moods came over him, turn just like a fiend new come out of--oh, I'll
just say it out, Aminadab, though ye be of the Seceders--just hell,
lad."

"But, good mother Janet--"

"Mother your own mother, man, till you be a father, Aminadab. Have I not
told you to let me go on? There's no honour in a mother: that sow you
are eating was the mother six times of thirteen at each litter; and I
think that's about seventy-eight. Mother, forsooth! Ay, and yet you'll
see a beggar wretch, clad in tanterwallops--rags is owre guid a
word--coming to Logie door, and looking as if she had the right to
demand meal from me, merely because she has two at her feet and one in
her arms. Such honourable gaberlunzies get no meal from me. My master
was keen for the match; but the Nabob was shy of the white face. And
here's a curious thing--I got it from my lady herself. She said the
Nabob, her papa, as she called him--for, just like us here, they have
kindly words and real human feelings--made a bargain with my master,
that if he took her away out of India to where the big woman they call
the Company lives, he would be kind to her, and '_treat her as he would
do a child which is rocked in a cradle_.'"

"Better than Naomi's wish," said Aminadab; "'And the Lord grant ye find
rest in the house of thy husband.'"

"That bargain they made him sign with blood drawn just right over his
heart; and the Nabob signed, too, for the weight of gold and the jewels.
Then came the marriage. Such a day had not been witnessed in Bombay for
years, i