'Twas
well enough for your fine gentleman in his buckled shoes and silk
stockings to enter such a place, but for myself, in my coarse boots, I
seemed like a colt in a flower garden. The girl sat by a brazier of
charcoal, with the scarlet-coated negro at hand doing her commands. She
was so busy at the chocolate making that when her uncle said, "Elspeth,
I have brought you Mr. Garvald," she had no hand to give me. She looked
up and smiled, and went on with the business, while I stood awkwardly
by, the scorn of the assured gentlemen around me.
By and by she spoke: "You and I seem fated to meet in odd places. First
it was at Carnwath in the rain, and then at the Cauldstaneslap in a
motley company. Then I think it was in the Tolbooth, Mr. Garvald, when
you were very gruff to your deliverer. And now we are both exiles, and
once more you step in like a bogle out of the night. Will you taste my
chocolate?"
She served me first, and I could see how little the favour was to the
liking of her little retinue of courtiers. My silken gentleman, whose
name was Grey, broke in on us abruptly.
"What is this story, sir, of Indian dangers? You are new to the
country, or you would know that it is the old cry of the landless and
the lawless.
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