In due time both sailed down to dinner. And a right jolly dinner it was, too. Fanny had never seen anything like it before. Of course that lovely haunch of tender venison was the pièce de résistance, while an immense plum-pudding brought up the rear. Dessert was spread, with some rare wines—including whisky—but Sandie could scarce be prevailed upon to touch anything. He was almost awed by the presence of the reverend and aged minister, who tried, whenever he could, to slip in a word or two about the brevity of life, the eternity that was before them all, the Judgment Day, and so on, and so forth. But the minister, for all that, patronised the Highland whisky.
“No, no,” he said, waving the port wine away. “‘Look not thou upon the wine when it is red; when it giveth his colour to the cup... at the last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder.’”
It was observed, however, that as he spoke he filled his glass with Glenlivet.
Well, I suppose no man need care to look upon the wine when it is red, if his tumbler be flanked by a bottle of Scotch.
The dinner ended, there was the march homeward to Sandie’s wee house on the knoll, pipers first, playing right merrily; Sandie and his bride arm-in-arm next; then, four deep, lads and lasses gay, to the number of fifty at least.
And what cheering and laughing as they reached the door. But finally all departed to prepare for the ball that was to take place later on in the great barn of Bilberry Hall.
And it was a barn, too!—or, rather, a loft, for it was built partly on a brae, so that after climbing some steps you found yourself on level ground, and entered a great door.
Early in the evening, long ere lad and lass came linking to the door, the band had taken their places on an elevated platform at one side of, but in the middle of, the hall.
The floor was swept and chalked, the walls all around densely decorated with evergreens, Scotch pine and spruce and heather galore, with here and there hanging lamps.