Page:Scott - Tales of my Landlord - 3rd series, vol. 1 - 1819.djvu/315

Rh, reconnoitre the interior of the but, or kitchen apartment, of the mansion.

Reverse of the sad menage at the Castle of Wolf's Crag, a bickering fire roared up the cooper's chimney. His wife on the one side, in her pearlings and pudding-sleeves, put the last finishing touch to her holiday's apparel, while she contemplated a very handsome and good-humoured face in a broken mirror, raised upon the bink (the shelves on which the plates are disposed,) for her special accommodation. Her mother, old Luckie Loup-the-Dyke, "a canty carline" as was within twenty miles of her, according to the unanimous report of the cummers, or gossips, sat by the fire in the full glory of a grogram gown, lammer beads, and a clean cockernony, whiffing a snug pipe of tobacco, and superintending the affairs of the kitchen. For—sight more interesting to the anxious heart and craving entrails of the desponding Seneschal, than either buxom dame or canny cummer,—there bubbled on the aforesaid