Robbie was at this instant struggling to regain possession of the itinerant Dash, who, perceiving a means of escape, was hobbling his way to the door.
“Wait a minute,” said Robbie, having captured the runaway,—“wait a minute, Liza, and Dash will show you how to dance like Mother Garth.”
“Shaf on Dash!” said Liza, taking a step or two into the room and securing to that animal his emancipation by giving him a smack that knocked him out of Robbie's hands. “Do you think I've come here to see your tipsy games?”
Robbie responded to this inquiry by asking with provoking good nature if she had not rather come to give him a token of her love.
“Give us a kiss, lass,” he said, getting up to his feet and extending his arms to help himself.
Liza gave him something instead, but it produced a somewhat louder and smarter percussion.
“What a whang over the lug she brong him!” said Reuben, turning to the schoolmaster.
“I reckon it's mair wind ner wool, like clippin' a swine,” said Matthew Branthwaite, who entered the inn at this juncture.
Robbie's good humor was as radiant as ever. “A kiss for a blow,” he said, laughing and struggling with the little woman. “It's a Christian virtue, eh, father?”
“Ye'll not get many of them, at that rate,” answered Mattha, less than half pleased at an event which he could not comprehend. “It's slow wark suppin' buttermilk with a pitchfork.”