“If your honour wants a wife,” says himself. “Let you be stepping in, for it’s maybe in this house you’ll find her.”
With that the gentleman got down off his horse, and it was an honourable reception they made him. Evenly herself was content to remember the scorn put on poor Shan Alec, when she seen the magnificent suitor was come.
The gentleman had a smile on his face when he heard all the boasts of the farmer.
“My good man,” says he, “I think scorn on your money and land, for I’d have you to know that I am a King in my own place. But that girl sitting by the hearth has a lovely white countenance on her, and her heart I am seeking for love of the same.”
“Oh mother,” says Bride in a whisper, “will you send him away?”
“Is it raving you are?” asks herself.
“I’d go through fire and water for my poor Shan Alec!” says Bride.
“Will you hold your whisht,” says her mother. “That is no right talk for a well-reared girl.”
The farmer and the gentleman made their agreement and opened the bottle of whiskey. There was to be a nice little feast for to celebrate the settlement, and the cloth was set in the parlour on account of the grandeur of the suitor and he not used to a kitchen at all.
When the supper was served didn’t the servant girl call the mistress out to the kitchen.