Mrs. Loudon

“The feast is smoking wide.”

“Here, Alice, bairn, here, tack it fray me; and mind ye, mack it light and flecky, like to the leaves o’ a reading buke,” cried our old friend, Mrs. Smyth; who stood up to her elbows in flour, and up to her eyes in business, in the housekeeper’s room at Lodore House; “and mind ye dinna pit the raspberry in ’till the puffs be mair nor half baked; or it ’ill be bubbling o’er, and spoiling the edges o’ the pastry. Bless me weel, sich a fuss! Ye mun mind a’ the’e thing soon bairn. I’m no used till them noo, and, indeed, I’m getting auld. Nell, woman! rin, will ye, till the ice-hoose, there’s a canny wife! and see if yon jelly will turn oot yet. What will come o’ me, if the jelly will no turn oot affoor dinner-time! Maister Donald,” said she, to the butler, who had just entered, and who was a countryman of her own, being one of the old Scotch establishment, “hoo cum ye on? As for my auld head, it’s fairly bothered: we are no used to such doings o’ late years, Maister Donald!”

“Vara true, Mrs. Smyth,” said the butler, “it’s thirteen years, I believe, sin we have had to say, reg’lar coompany in this hoose.”

“Aye, thirteen years,” rejoined Mrs. Smyth, “and some three or four weeks, it is noo sin that awfu’ neght, (and here she turned to Lady Arandale’s woman, who sat beside her,) when the hale country roond was shining wi’ bonfires and illuminations; for every ane at had a pane o’ glass, woman, pit a candle in’t, till the bonny smooth lake yonder fairly glittered! I mind it as weel, as it had been but yestereen—bit, affoor the lights o’ joy were put oot, him, for the birth o’ whom they were lighted, and her, wha gave him birth, baith lay dead! Aye, cauld corses they were, afoor ever the embers o’ the bonfires had ceased to reek!” Here a few tears fell from the eyes of poor Mrs. Smyth; for the present bustle had brought that which preceded the melancholy event to which she alluded, fresh to her mind.

“It was a sair blow, in truth!” said the butler; “and sairly did the mistress take it to heart; and wha could blame her?”

“It’s time, however,” replied Mrs. Smyth, “that the peur lasses, wha were o’er young to ken ony thing about the loss o’ their mither, peur things, should see a little o’ the warl, and ha’e some youthfu’ divartions. They are baith i’ their eighteenth year noo,” she added, again addressing the stranger; “and if they dina ha’e their sport, peur things, a wee while, afoor they git a gliff o’ the ills o’ this mortal life, they’l set little count by dancing, and the like, by and bye! Bit here comes Nell wi’ the jelly! That’s right—my mind’s easy noo! Come awa, will ye, Maister Donald, and look o’er the things wi’ me: I’s feard for my life, at I shall forgit someot at’s maist material.”