learned man, to bring this Yerl into our house
without speaking a word to a body! And there's the distress of thae
Mucklebackits--we canna get a fin o' fish--and we hae nae time to send
ower to Fairport for beef, and the mutton's but new killed--and that
silly fliskmahoy, Jenny Rintherout, has taen the exies, and done
naething but laugh and greet, the skirl at the tail o' the guffaw, for
twa days successfully--and now we maun ask that strange man, that's as
grand and as grave as the Yerl himsell, to stand at the sideboard! and I
canna gang into the kitchen to direct onything, for he's hovering there,
making some pousowdie* for my Lord, for he doesna eat like ither folk
neither--And how to sort the strange servant man at dinner time--I am
sure, Mr. Blattergowl, a'thegither, it passes my judgment."

* Pousowdie,--Miscellaneous mess.

"Truly, Miss Griselda," replied the divine, "Monkbarns was
inconsiderate. He should have taen a day to see the invitation, as they
do wi' the titular's condescendence in the process of valuation and
sale. But the great man could not have come on a sudden to ony house in
this parish where he could have been better served with vivers--that I
must say--and also that the steam from the kitchen is very gratifying
to my nostrils;--and if ye have ony household affairs to attend to, Mrs.
Griselda, never make a stranger of me--I can amuse mysell very weel with
the larger copy of Erskine's Institutes."

And taking down from the window-seat that amusing folio, (the Scottish
Coke upon Littleton), he opened it, as if instinctively, at the tenth
title of Book Second, "of Teinds or Tythes," and was presently deeply
wrapped up in an abstruse discussion concerning the temporality of
benefices.

The entertainment, about which Miss Oldbuck expressed so much anxiety,
was at length placed upon the table; and the Earl of Glenallan, for the
first time since the date of his calamity, sat at a stranger's board,
surrounded by strangers. He seemed to himself like a man in a dream,
or one whose brain was not fully recovered from the effects of an
intoxicating potion. Relieved, as he had that morning been, from the
image of guilt which had so long haunted his imagination, he felt his
sorrows as a lighter and more tolerable load, but was still unable
to take any share in the conversation that passed around him. It was,
indeed, of a cast very different from that which he had been accustomed
to. The bluntness of Oldbuc