“Whaur can the hens hae come frae?” snorted the jolly woman. “Some o’ the hizzies, nae doot.”
“No, mistress,” said I; “they flew in at the window.”
“Weel, maybe they did.”
“Just in the way the Bologna sausages did,” said I.
“Na, it was the jade Bess Brown did that job, but I’m an innocent woman. Was I no sleeping when ye cam in? Does a sleeping woman catch hens in her sleep as she does flees in her mooth?”
“Well,” said I, turning to Sandy, “you’re the man.”
“The Lord’s will be dune,” said the wife, in a tone quite at variance with her old system of asserting her innocence, (Sandy, her “husband,” being bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh). “If Sandy has disgraced the house I made him master o’, ay, and a gentleman to boot, he maun just dree the dregs.”
Nor was I much surprised at this turn, for I had heard that she was losing conceit of Sandy, and had been repenting that she had raised him to the rank of a gentleman as well as lord of the Cock and Trumpet. Here was a good opportunity for getting quit of him, and the shrewd Jezebel saw her advantage.
“Now, Sandy,” said I again to the cool rogue, still occupied with his work, and who had now arrived at the head feathers of the last duck, which head feathers (though generally left by poultry pluckers) I observed he had carefully taken from every victim: “lay down the duck and get a pillow-slip.”
“Here’s ane,” cried his wife on the instant, as she began to undo the strings of her head cushion, ay, even that which had been frequently pressed by the head of her lord. “There,” she added, as she threw the article out of the bed.