not be contenting yourselves with the stirabout now that you have your
brother back again with you."

"Cook the salmon, Hannah; plenty of it, and some of the ham and the
eggs. And, Neal, do you take the key of the cellar and get us a bottle
of wine and the whisky that old Maconchy brought in from Rathlin last
summer. It's not often I take the like, Donald, but it is meet that we
should make merry and be glad."

Mistress Hannah Macaulay was a competent cook and housekeeper. It is
noticeable that women with sharp tongues are generally more efficient
than their gentler sisters. Solomon, who knew a good many things, seems
also to have known this. He was of opinion that a peaceful dinner of
herbs is better than a stalled ox and contention therewith. He knew that
he could not have both. It is the shrew who succeeds in giving the males
dependent on her stalled oxen and such like dainties to eat.

The caressing wife and the sweet-tempered cook accomplish no more
than dinners of herbs, and generally even they are not particularly
appetising. The fact is, that the management of domestic affairs is
the most trying of all occupations. Cooking, washing, cleaning, and
generally doing for men in a house means continuous irritation and
worry. A woman, however sweet-natured originally, who is condemned to
such work must either lose her temper over it, in which case she
may cook stalled oxen, but will certainly serve them with sauce of
contention, or she may give up the struggle and preserve her gentleness.
Then she will accomplish no more than dinners of herbs, boiled cabbages,
from which tepid water exudes, and dishes of pallid turnips, supposed
to be mashed but full of lumps. Solomon preferred, or said he preferred,
kisses and cauliflowers. On questions of taste there is no use
disputing.

Mistress Hannah Macaulay's salmon steaks came to the table with an
appetising steam rising from their dish. Her slices of fried ham formed
an attractive nest for the white-skinned poached eggs. She had plates of
curly oatcake and powdery farles. She had yellow butter in saucers. She
brought the porridge to table in well-scoured wooden bowls with horn
spoons in them.

"The stirabout is good," she said. "I thought you'd like to sup them
before you ate the meat."

Neal poured the wine into an old cut-glass decanter, and set Maconchy's
bottle of whisky, distilled, no doubt, by Maconchy himself among the
Rathlin Hills, beside his father's plate.