"I want food rather than drink," said the young man wearily.
"Aye! but drink is the ain an' the tither ye ken."
"Mister," cried the landlady, who had been bottling up her wrath, "I'd hev y' know, es m' naime es 'Liza Narby, an' I comes of genteel folk in Rotherhithe. Don't y' call me a bloomin' fool. D'ye see?"
"Pardon me," said the Reverend Michael in excellent English. "I did not misuse the word 'blooming,' which applies only to young and lovely beings of your sex."
"Such es Elspeth," sneered Mrs. Narby, with the venom of an ugly woman.
"Haud your tongue, ye limmer," thundered Gowrie, evidently irritated, and cast a look at the door, through which the girl had vanished, "or, nae mair custom do ye get frae me."
"Ho!" shouted Mrs. Narby, with her arms akimbo, and going at once on the warpath, "'spose I kin do without thet any'ow, an'----"
She was about to launch out in true Whitechapel style, when the untidy youth intervened listlessly.
"Milton talks of a blooming archangel," said he, addressing the Rev. Michael Gowrie.
"Nae in your mither's sense," chuckled the scholar.