Page:Tales of my landlord (Volume 2).djvu/162

 ring the interview,—for she, like her mistress, had her own feeling of pride,—now lifted up her voice and wept aloud.

Cuddie, whose malady, real or pretended, still detained him in bed, lay perdue during all this conference, snugly ensconced within his boarded bedstead, and terrified to death lest Lady Margaret, whom he held in hereditary reverence, should have detected his presence, and bestowed on him personally some of those bitter reproaches with which she loaded his mother. As soon as he thought her ladyship fairly out of hearing, he bounced up in his nest.

"The foul fa' ye, that I suld say sae," he cried out to his mother, "for a lang-tongued wife, as my father, honest man, aye ca'd ye! Couldna ye let the leddy alane wi' your whiggery? And I was e'en as great a gomeril to let you persuade me to lie up here amang the blankets like a hurcheon, instead o' gaun to the wappen-schaw like other folk. Odd, but I pat a