THE festive morning dawned at last, a vigorous, red October day, and all about and around Merkland was bustle and preparation.
“Duncan,” cried Bell the cook, her face looming, already red and full, through a mist; “when was that weary man, Bob Partan, to send up the turbot?”
“Punctual at eleven,” said the laconic Duncan.
“Eh! man, Duncan,” said May, “have ye tried on your new livery yet?—isn’t it grand?”
“Hout, you silly fool,” responded Duncan, “has the like o’ me leisure, think you, to be minding about coats and breeks?”
“Eh!” exclaimed Bell, “what has possessed me! There’s no clove in a’ the house and they need to be in—I kenna how mony things. You maun off to Portoran, Duncan, gallopping; there’s not a minute to be lost.”
“Duncan,” cried Johnnie Halflin, the boy at the Tower, who, with sundry other articles, had been lent for the occasion, “I’ve casten doun a jar o’ the Smoothlie honey, and it’s broken twa o’ the bottles. Man, come afore the leddy sees’t.”
“Duncan,” said Barbara Genty, Mrs. Ross’s own especial attendant. “You are to go up to the parlor, this minute. You were sent for half an hour ago.”
“Conscience!” exclaimed the overwhelmed Duncan, “is there two of us, that ye are rugging and riving at a man in that gate? Get out o’ my road, ye young sinner, or there shall be mair things broken than bottles! I’m coming, Bauby. Woman Bell, could ye no hae minded a’thing at once?”
Above stairs, Mr. Lewis’s servant, who had left Merkland a loutish lad, and returned glistening in Parisian polish and refinement, a superfine gentleman, was condescendingly advising with Mrs. Ross, as to the garniture of the dinner-table. Things were so arranged in the Hotel de ——, John said; for Monsieur Charles, Mr. Sutherland’s major-domo, had a style of his own. But for the country, John fancied this would do very well. Mrs. Ross had dismissed Anne, an hour before, to her own room, as useless; and half-offended with the airs of her son’s dignified servant, was yet not above hearing the style of the Hotel de ——, and in some degree making it her model, certain that Parisian fashion had not penetrated to any other house in the district, and well-pleased to take the lead. For the gay parties at Falcon’s Craig, and the stately festivities at the Tower, had an individuality about them which had always been wanting in Merkland, and Mrs. Ross had resolved to outshine all to-day.