Mr. Dyce cleaned his glasses and chuckled. “H'm,” said he, “I admit there are exceptions. But please pass me my slippers, Bell; I fall back on Colin Cleland—you're both right and you're both wrong.”
Miss Bell was so put about at this that she went at once to the kitchen to start her niece on a course of cookery.
CHAPTER XX
KATERIN!” she said, coming into the kitchen with a handful of paper cuttings, and, hearing her, the maid's face blanched.
“I declare I never broke an article the day!” she cried, protestingly, well accustomed to that formal address when there had been an accident among her crockery.
“I wasn't charging you,” said her mistress. “Dear me! it must be an awful thing, a guilty conscience! I was thinking to give you—and maybe Lennox, if she would not mind—a lesson or two in cookery. It's a needful thing in a house with anything of a family. You know what men are!”
“Fine that!” said Kate. “They're always thinking what they'll put in their intervals, the greedy deevils!—beg your pardon, but it's not a swear in the Gaelic.”
“There's only one devil in any language, Kate,” said Miss Bell. “'How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!' And I am glad to think he is oftener on our foolish tongues than in our hearts. I have always been going to give you a cookery-book.”