tton's ready.'

It was even so. Mrs. Crosbie had been absent, like Eve, 'on hospitable
cares intent,' a duty which she did not conceive herself exempted from,
either by the dignity of her husband's rank in the municipality, or the
splendour of her Brussels silk gown, or even by the more highly prized
lustre of her birth; for she was born a Maxwell, and allied, as her
husband often informed his friends, to several of the first families in
the county. She had been handsome, and was still a portly, good-looking
woman of her years; and though her peep into the kitchen had somewhat
heightened her complexion, it was no more than a modest touch of rouge
might have done.

The provost was certainly proud of his lady, nay, some said he was
afraid of her; for of the females of the Redgauntlet family there went a
rumour, that, ally where they would, there was a grey mare as surely in
the stables of their husbands, as there is a white horse in Wouvermans'
pictures. The good dame, too, was supposed to have brought a spice of
politics into Mr. Crosbie's household along with her; and the provost's
enemies at the council-table of the burgh used to observe that he
uttered there many a bold harangue against the Pretender, and in favour
of King George and government, of which he dared not have pronounced
a syllable in his own bedchamber; and that, in fact, his wife's
predominating influence had now and then occasioned his acting,
or forbearing to act, in a manner very different from his general
professions of zeal for Revolution principles. If this was in any
respect true, it was certain, on the other hand, that Mrs. Crosbie, in
all external points, seemed to acknowledge the 'lawful sway and right
supremacy' of the head of the house, and if she did not in truth
reverence her husband, she at least seemed to do so.

This stately dame received Mr. Maxwell (a cousin of course) with
cordiality, and Fairford with civility; answering at the same time with
respect, to the magisterial complaints of the provost, that dinner was
just coming up. 'But since you changed poor Peter MacAlpin, that used
to take care of the town-clock, my dear, it has never gone well a single
day.'

'Peter MacAlpin, my dear,' said the provost,' made himself too busy for
a person in office, and drunk healths and so forth, which it became no
man to drink or to pledge, far less one that is in point of office a
servant of the public, I understand that he lost the music bell