"I dinna ken, sir," she replied, in a dry, REVECHE tone, which
carried me back twenty years, "I am nane of thae heartsome
landleddies that can tell country cracks, and make themsel's
agreeable, and I was ganging to put on a fire for you in the Red
Room; but if it is your will to stay here, he that pays the
lawing maun choose the lodging."
I endeavoured to engage her in conversation; but though she
answered, with a kind of stiff civility, I could get her into no
freedom of discourse, and she began to look at her wheel and at
the door more than once, as if she meditated a retreat. I was
obliged, therefore, to proceed to some special questions; that
might have interest for a person whose ideas were probably of a
very bounded description.
I looked round the apartment, being the same in which I had last
seen my poor mother. The author of the family history, formerly
mentioned, had taken great credit to himself for the improvements
he had made in this same jointure-house of Duntarkin, and how,
upon his marriage, when his mother took possession of the same as
her jointure-house, "to his great charges and expenses he caused
box the walls of the great parlour" (in which I was now sitting),
"empanel the same, and plaster the roof, finishing the apartment
with ane concave chimney, and decorating the same with pictures,
and a barometer and thermometer.
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