energy than delicacy flung it into the fire.

"Augh!" cried she, "just a sugar and saut butter thegither; buy nae mair
at yon shoep, vile count."

"Try this, out of Nature's shop," laughed their entertainer; and he
offered them, himself, some peaches and things.

"Hech! a medi--cine!" said Christie.

"Nature, my lad," said Miss Carnie, making her ivory teeth meet in their
first nectarine, "I didna ken whaur ye stoep, but ye beat the other
confectioners, that div ye."

The fair lass, who had watched the viscount all this time as demurely as
a cat cream, now approached him.

This young woman was the thinker; her voice was also rich, full, and
melodious, and her manner very engaging; it was half advancing, half
retiring, not easy to resist or to describe.

"Noo," said she, with a very slight blush stealing across her face, "ye
maun let me catecheeze ye, wull ye?"

The last two words were said in a way that would have induced a bear to
reveal his winter residence.

He smiled assent. Saunders retired to the door, and, excluding every
shade of curiosity from his face, took an attitude, half majesty, half
obsequiousness.

Christie stood by Lord Ipsden, with one hand on her hip (the knuckles
downward), but graceful as Antinous, and began.

"Hoo muckle is the queen greater than y' are?"

His lordship was obliged to reflect.

"Let me see--as is the moon to a wax taper, so is her majesty the queen
to you and me, and the rest."

"An' whaur does the Juke* come in?"

* Buceleuch.

"On this particular occasion, the Duke** makes one of us, my pretty
maid."

**Wellington

"I see! Are na yeawfu' prood o' being a lorrd?"

"What an idea!"

"His lordship did not go to bed a spinning-jenny, and rise up a lord,
like some of them," put in Saunders.

"Saunders," said the peer, doubtfully, "eloquence rather bores people."

"Then I mustn't speak again, my lord," said Saunders, respectfully.

"Noo," said the fair inquisitor, "ye shall tell me how ye came to be
lorrds, your faemily?"

"Saunders!"

"Na! ye manna flee to Sandy for a thing, ye are no a bairn, are ye?"

Here was a dilemma, the Saunders prop knocked rudely away, and obliged
to think for ourselves.

But Saunders would come to his distressed master's assistance. He
furtively conveyed to him a plump book--this was Saunders's manual of
faith; the author was Mr. Burke, not Edmund.

Lord Ipsden ran hastily over the page, closed the book, and sai