She set her thumb over her shoulder, pointing to a narrow door as of an aumrie or wall press.
'He is in there,' she said shortly.
'And what else is there in there?' said I, laughing, for what was I the wiser?
'Half a bullock is in there,' she said, laughing also. 'That is the meat-cupboard. It is fine and caller, and he is not troubled with flies upon his miserable bald head.'
'The meat-safe,' cried I, much astonished; 'and what does a reverend chaplain and a knight in the meat-safe?'
'The old dotard will not quit his maundering about the Black Vaut of Dunure to every one that comes near. He got hold of a silly chapman in the yard that came with fish from Ayr, and I declare he must sit down and prate by the hour of the Black Vaut of Dunure. So I shut him up in the meat-safe. Faith, I will give him Black Vaut of Dunure ere I have done with him. The Black Vaut of Cassillis and the company of the dinner roast will set him better.'
'And what says my lord to your using his chaplain so?'
The lady gazed at me a moment in a kind of wilderment. Then she broke into the vulgar speech of the country, which, because I learned to write English as those at the Queen's Court do, I have used but seldom in this chronicle—though, of course, not for lack of knowledge.
'Sain me,' she said, 'this may be a queer, uncanny world, but it is surely no come to that o't yet, that a wife mauna check and chastise her ain man. Guid Lord, no—life wadna be worth leevin'—see till this—' she said.
And taking a key from her pocket she rapidly unlocked the door of the meat-closet.