“Nay, I meant thee not offence, Sir Squire,” replied he.
“Ha!” said Sang, regaining his good-humour; “then I take no offence where none is meant. Your Scot and your Southern are born foes to fight in fair field; yet I see no just cause against their drinking together in good fellowship when the times be fitting, albeit they may be called upon anon to crack each other’s sconces in battle broil. Thine hand,” said he, stretching his right across the table to the Bishop’s man, whilst he poised the flagon with his left. “Peraunter thou be’st a soldier, though of a truth that garb of thine would speak thee to be as much of a clerk as an esquire; but, indeed, an thy trade be arms, I am bold to say, that Scotland doth not hold a man who will do thee the petites politesses of the skirmish more handsomely than I shall, should chance ever throw us against each other. Meanwhile my hearty service to thee.”
“Spoke like a true man,” said Roger Riddel, taking the flagon from his friend. “Here, tapster, we lack wine.”
“Nay, Roger,” said Sang, “but we cannot drink thus fasting. What a murrain keeps that knave with the——Ha! he comes. Why, holy St. Andrew, what meanest thou, villain, by putting down this flinty skim-milk? Caitiff, dost take us for ostriches, to digest iron? Saw I not hogs’ livers a-frying for our supper?”
“Nay, good master Squire,” said the flaxen-polled lad of a tapster, “sure mistress says that the livers be meat for your masters.”
“Meat for our masters, sirrah!” replied Sang; “and can the hostel of Master Sylvester Kyle, famed from the Borders to the Calais Straits—can this far-famed house, I say, afford nothing better for a brace of Scottish knights, whose renown hath filled the world from Cattiness to the land of Egypt, than a fried hog’s liver? Avoid, sinner, avoid; out of my way, and let me go talk to this same hostess.”
So saying, he strode over the bench, and, kicking the rushes before him in his progress towards the door, made directly for the kitchen.
CHAPTER II.
The Host and the Hostess—Preparing the Evening Meal.