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liberal, or a churl good-humoured, he is said, in Scotch, to be fey; that is, predestined to speedy death, of which mutations of humour are received as a sure indication.
“And that’s the maist sensible word ye have said this blessed morning. — Weel, but Tronda kens this lad weel, and she has often spoke to me about him. They call his father the Silent Man of Sumburgh, and they say he’s uncanny.”
“Hout, hout — nonsense, nonsense — they are aye at sic trash as that,” said the brother, “ when you want a day’s wark out of them — they have stepped ower the tangs, or they have met an uncanny body, or they have turned about the boat against the sun, and then there’s nought to be done that day.”
“Weel, weel, brother, ye are so wise,” said Baby, “ because ye knapped Latin at Saint Andrews; and can your lair tell me, then, what the lad has round his halse?”
“A Barcelona napkin, as wet as a dishclout, and I have just lent him one of my own overlays,” said Triptolemus.
“A Barcelona napkin!” said Baby, elevating her voice, and then suddenly lowering it, as from apprehension of being overheard — ” I say a gold chain!”
“A gold chain!” said Triptolemus.
“In troth is it, hinny; and how like you that? The folk say here, as Tronda tells me, that the King of the Drows gave it to his father, the Silent Man of Sumburgh.”
“I wish you would speak sense, or be the silent woman,” said Triptolemus. “The upshot of it all is, then, that this lad is the rich stranger’s son, and that you are giving him the goose you were to keep till Michaelmas!”
“Troth, brother, we maun do something for God’s sake, and to make friends; and the lad,” added Baby (for even she was not altogether above the prejudices of her sex in favour of outward form), “ the lad has a fair face of his ain.”
“Ye would have let mony a fair face,” said Triptolemus, “ pass the door pining, if it had not been for the gold chain.”
“Nae doubt, nae doubt,” replied Barbara; “ye wadna have me waste our substance on every thigger or sorner that has the luck to come by the door in a wet day? But this lad has a fair and a wide name in the country, and Tronda says he is to be married to a daughter of the rich Udaller, Magnus Troil, and the marriage-day is to be fixed whenever he makes choice (set him up) between the twa lasses; and so it wad be as much as our good name is worth, and our quiet forby, to let him sit unserved, although he does come unsent for.”
“The best reason in life,” said Triptolemus, “for letting a man into a house is, that you dare not bid him go by. However, since there is a man of quality amongst them, I will let him know whom he has to do with, in my person.” Then advancing to the door, he exclaimed, “Heus tibi, Dave!” “ Adsum,” answered the youth, entering the apartment. “Hem!” said the erudite Triptolemus, “not altogether deficient in his humanities, I see. I will try him further. — Canst thou aught of husbandry, young gentleman?”
“Troth, sir, not I,” answered Mordaunt; “I have been trained to plough upon the sea, and to reap upon the crag.”
“Plough the sea! “ said Triptolemus; “ that’s a furrow requires small harrowing; and for your harvest on the crag, I suppose you mean these scozvries, or whatever you call them. It is a sort of ingathering which the Ranzelman should stop by the law; nothing more likely to break an honest man’s bones. I profess I cannot see the pleasure men propose by dangling in a rope’s-end betwixt earth and heaven. In my case, I had as lief the other end of the rope were fastened to the gibbet; I should be sure of not falling, at least.”
“Now, I would only advise you to try it,” replied Mordaunt. “Trust me, the world has few grander sensations than when one is perched in mid-air between a high-browed cliff and a roaring ocean, the rope by which you are sustained seeming scarce stronger than a silken thread, and the stone on which you have one foot steadied, affording such a breadth as the kittywake might rest upon — to feel and know all this, with the full confidence that your own agility of limb, and strength of head, can bring you as safe off as if you had the wing of the gosshawk — this is indeed being almost independent of the earth you tread on!”
Triptolemus stared at this enthusiastic description of an amusement which had so few charms for him; and his sister, looking at the glancing eye and elevated bearing of the young [adventurer, answered, by ejaculating, “ My certie, lad, but ye are a brave chield!”
“A brave chield?” returned Yellowley, — ”I say a brave goose, to be flichtering and fleeing in the wind when he might abide upon terra firma! But come, here’s a goose that is more to the purpose, when once it is well boiled. Get us trenchers and salt, Baby — but in truth it will prove salt enough — a tasty morsel it is; but I think the Zetlanders be the only folk in the world that think of running such risks to catch geese, and then boiling them when they have done.”
“To be sure,” replied his sister (it was the only word they had agreed in that day), “it would be an unco thing to bid ony gudewife in Angus or a’ the Mearns boil a goose, while there was sic things as spits in the warld. — But wha’s this neist!” she added, looking towards the entrance with great indignation. “ My certie, open doors, and dogs come in — and wha opened the door to him?”
“I did, to be sure,” replied Mordaunt; “you would not have a poor devil stand beating your deaf door-cheeks in weather like this? — Here goes something, though, to help the fire,” he added, drawing out the sliding bar of oak with which the door had been secured, and throwing it on the hearth, whence it was snatched by Dame Baby in great wrath, she exclaiming at the same time, —
“It’s sea-borne timber, as there’s little else here, and he dings it about as if it were a fir-clog! — And who be you, an it please you? “ she added, turning to the stranger, — ” a very hallanshaker loon, as ever crossed my twa een!”
“I am a jagger, if it like your ladyship,” replied the uninvited guest, a stout vulgar, little man, who had indeed the humble appearance of a pedlar, called jagger in these islands, “ never travelled in a waur day, or was more willing to get to harbourage. — Heaven be praised for fire and house-room!”
So saying, he drew a stool to the fire, and sat down without further ceremony. Dame Baby stared “ wild as grey gosshawk,” and was meditating how to express her indignation in something warmer than words, for which the boiling pot seemed to offer a convenient hint, when an old half-starved serving-woman — the Tronda already mentioned — the sharer of Barbara’s domestic cares, who had been as yet in some remote corner of the mansion, now hobbled into the room, and broke out into exclamations which indicated some new cause of alarm.
“O master!” and “O mistress!” were the only sounds! she could for some time articulate, and then followed them up with, “ The best in the house — the best in the house — set a’ on the board, and a’ will be little aneugh. — There is auld Norna of Fitful Head, the most fearful woman in all the isles!”
“Where can she have been wandering? “ said Mordaunt, not without some apparent sympathy with the surprise, if not with the alarm, of the old domestic; “ but it is needless to ask — the worse the weather, the more likely is she to be a traveller.”
“What new tramper is this? “ echoed the distracted Baby, whom the quick succession of guests had driven wellnigh crazy with vexation. “ I’ll soon settle her wandering, I sail warrant, if my brother has but the saul of a man in him, or if there be a pair of jougs at Scalloway!”
“The iron was never forged on stithy that would hauld her,” said the old maidservant. “ She comes — she comes — God’s sake speak her fair and canny, or we will have a ravelled hasp on the yarn-windles!”
As she spoke, a woman, tall enough almost to touch the top of the door with her cap, stepped into the room, signing the cross as she entered, and pronouncing, with a solemn voice, “ The blessing of God and Saint Ronald on the open door, and their broad malison and mine upon close-handed churls!”
“And