s microcosm, and employed his time in the usual devices of
loiterers, partly by walking for an appetite, partly by observing the
progress of his watch towards three o'clock, when he had happily
succeeded in getting an employment more serious. His table, in the blue
parlour, was displayed with two covers, after the fairest fashion of the
Cleikum Inn; yet the landlady, with a look "civil but sly," contrived to
insinuate a doubt whether the clergyman would come, "when a' was dune."

Mr. Touchwood scorned to listen to such an insinuation until the fated
hour arrived, and brought with it no Mr. Cargill. The impatient
entertainer allowed five minutes for difference of clocks, and variation
of time, and other five for the procrastination of one who went little
into society. But no sooner were the last five minutes expended, than he
darted off for the Manse, not, indeed, much like a greyhound or a deer,
but with the momentum of a corpulent and well-appetized elderly
gentleman, who is in haste to secure his dinner. He bounced without
ceremony into the parlour, where he found the worthy divine clothed in
the same plaid nightgown, and seated in the very elbow-chair, in which
he had left him five hours before. His sudden entrance recalled to Mr.
Cargill, not an accurate, but something of a general, recollection, of
what had passed in the morning, and he hastened to apologize with
"Ha!--indeed--already?--upon my word, Mr. A--a--, I mean my dear
friend--I am afraid I have used you ill--I forgot to order any
dinner--but we will do our best.--Eppie--Eppie!"

Not at the first, second, nor third call, but _ex intervallo_, as the
lawyers express it, Eppie, a bare-legged, shock-headed, thick-ankled,
red-armed wench, entered, and announced her presence by an emphatic
"What's your wull?"

"Have you got any thing in the house for dinner, Eppie?"

"Naething but bread and milk, plenty o't--what should I have?"

"You see, sir," said Mr. Cargill, "you are like to have a Pythagorean
entertainment; but you are a traveller, and have doubtless been in your
time thankful for bread and milk."

"But never when there was any thing better to be had," said Mr.
Touchwood. "Come, Doctor, I beg your pardon, but your wits are fairly
gone a wool-gathering; it was _I_ invited _you_ to dinner, up at the inn
yonder, and not you me."

"On my word, and so it was," said Mr. Cargill; "I knew I was quite
right--I knew there was a dinner engagement betwixt us, I