Page:Scott - Tales of my Landlord - 3rd series, vol. 1 - 1819.djvu/291

Rh he exclaimed, with very little ceremony, "The de'il's in the gentles! they breakfast sae lordly, that the loss of the best dinner ever cook pat fingers to, makes them as merry as if it were the best jeest in a' George Buchanan. If there was as little in your honours' wames, as there is in Caleb Balderstone's, less cackling wad serve ye on sic a gravaminous subject."

Caleb's blunt expression of resentment again awakened the mirth of the company, which, by the way, he regarded not only as an aggression upon the dignity of the family, but a special contempt of the eloquence with which he himself had summed up the extent of their supposed losses;—"a description of a dinner," as he said afterwards to Mysie, "that wad hae made a fu' man hungry, and them to sit there laughing at it."

"But," said Miss Ashton, composing her countenance as well as she could, "are all these delicacies so totally destroyed, that no scrap can be collected?"