“You may say what you please, Mr. Pepper, but it is not often in my country that men of genius are seen performing the part of cook to robbers!”
“No!” quoth Tomlinson, “they are performing the more profitable part of robbers to cooks, eh!”
“Damme, you're out,” cried Long Ned,—“for in that country there are either no robbers, because there is nothing to rob; or the inhabitants are all robbers, who have plundered one another, and made away with the booty!”
“May the de'il catch thee!” said MacGrawler, stung to the quick,—for, like all Scots, he was a patriot; much on the same principle as a woman who has the worst children makes the best mother.
“The de'il,” said Ned, mimicking the “silver sound,” as Sir W. Scott had been pleased facetiously to call the “mountain tongue” (the Scots in general seem to think it is silver, they keep it so carefully) “the de'il,—MacDeil, you mean, sure, the gentleman must have been a Scotchman!”
The sage grinned in spite; but remembering the patience of Epictetus when a slave, and mindful also of the strong arm of Long Ned, he curbed his temper, and turned the beefsteaks with his fork.
“Well, Ned,” said Augustus, throwing himself into a chair, which he drew to the fire, while he gently patted the huge limbs of Mr. Pepper, as if to admonish him that they were not so transparent as glass, “let us look at the fire; and, by the by, it is your turn to see to the horses.”
“Plague on it!” cried Ned; “it is always my turn, I think. Holla, you Scot of the pot! can't you prove that I groomed the beasts last? I'll give you a crown to do it.”
The wise MacGrawler pricked up his ears.
“A crown!” said he,—“a crown! Do you mean to insult me, Mr. Pepper? But, to be sure, you did see to the horses last; and this worthy gentleman, Mr. Tomlinson, must remember it too.”