“I doubt, for all your talk, if you’ve got anything but your miserable whisky!” interrupted Lord Mergwain.
Now the laird had some remnants of old wine in the once well stored cellar, and, thankless as his visitor seemed likely to turn out, his hospitality would not allow him to withhold what he had.
“I have a few bottles of claret,” he said, “—if it should not be over-old!—I do not understand much about wine myself.”
“Let’s have it up,” cried his lordship. “We’ll see. If you don’t know good wine, I do. I’m old enough for any wine.”
The laird would have had more confidence in recommending his port, which he had been told was as fine as any in Scotland, but he thought claret safer for one in his lordship’s condition—one who having drunk would drink again. He went therefore to the wine cellar, which had once been the dungeon of the castle, and brought thence a most respectable-looking magnum, dirty as a burrowing terrier, and to the eye of the imagination hoary with age. The eyes of the toper glistened at the sight. Eagerly he stretched out both hands towards it. They actually trembled with desire. Hardly could he endure the delay of its uncorking. No sooner did the fine promissory note of the discharge of its tompion reach his ear, than he cried out, with the authority of a field-officer at least:
“Decant it. Leave the last glass in the bottom.”
The laird filled a decanter, and set it before him.
“Haven’t you a mangum-jug?”
“No, my lord.”
“Then fill another decanter, and mind the last glass.”