Page:Tales of my landlord (Volume 2).djvu/179

 and a jar of salt butter, were in common to the company.

To enjoy this exquisite cheer, was placed at the head of the table the old laird himself, with his nephew on the one side, and the favourite housekeeper on the other. At a long interval, and beneath the salt of course, sate old Robin, a meagre, half-starved serving-man, rendered cross and cripple by the rheumatism, and a dirty drab of a house-maid, whom use had rendered callous to the daily exercitations which her temper underwent at the hands of her master and Mrs Wilson; a barnman, a white-headed cow-herd boy, and Cuddie the new ploughman and his mother, completed the party. The other labourers belonging to the property resided in their own houses, happy at least in this, that if their cheer was not more delicate than that which we have described, they could at least eat their fill, unwatched by the sharp, envious, grey eyes of Milnwood, which seemed to measure the quantity