On entering the kitchen, Master Mortimer Sang found the [[30]]hostess, a buxom dame with rosy cheeks, raven hair, and jet-black eyes, busily employed in cooking the food intended for the two knights. Having already had a glimpse of her, he remarked her to be of an age much too green for so wintry a husband as Sylvester Kyle; so checking his haste, he approached her with his best Parisian obeisance.
“Can it be,” said he, assuming an astonished air—“can it possibly be, that the cruel Master Sylvester Kyle doth permit so much loveliness to be melted over the vile fire of a kitchen, an ’twere a piece of butter, and that to fry a paltry pig’s liver withal?”
The dame turned round, looked pleased, smiled, flirted her head, and then went on frying. Sighing as if he were expiring his soul, Sang continued,—
“Ah, had it been my happy fate to have owned thee, what would I not have done to preserve the lustre of those charms unsullied?”
Mrs. Sylvester Kyle again looked round, again she smiled, again she flirted her head, and, leaving the frying-pan to fry in its own way, she dropped a curtsey, and called Master Sang a right civil and fair-spoken gentleman.
“Would that thou hadst been mine,” continued Sang, throwing yet more tenderness into his expression: “locked in these fond arms, thy beauty should have been shielded from every chance of injury.” So saying he suited the action to the word, and embracing Mrs. Kyle, he imprinted on her cheeks kisses, which, though burning enough in themselves, were cold compared to the red heat of the face that received them. Having thus paved the way to his purpose—
“What could possess thee, beauteous Mrs. Kyle,” said he, “to marry that gorbellied glutton of thine, a fellow who, to fill his own rapacious bowke, and fatten his own scoundrel carcase, starveth thee to death? I see it in thy sweet face, my fair hostess; ’tis vain to conceal it; the wretch is miserably poor; he feedeth thee not. The absolute famine that reigneth in his beggarly buttery, nay, rather flintery (for buttery it were ridiculous to call it), cannot suffice to afford one meal a-day to that insatiable maw of his, far less can it supply those cates and niceties befitting the stomach of an angel like thyself.”
Mrs. Kyle was whirled up to the skies by this rhapsody; Master Sylvester had never said anything half so fine. But her pride could not stand the hits the squire had given against the poverty of her larder.
“Nay thee now, but, kind sir,” said she, “we be’s not so bad [[31]]off as all that; Master, my goodman Kyle hath as fat a buttery, I warrant thee, as e’er a publican in all the Borders.”
“Nay, nay, ’tis impossible, beautiful Mrs. Kyle,” said Mortimer again—“’tis impossible; else why these wretched pigs’ entrails for a couple of knights, of condition so high that they may be emperors before they die, if God give them good luck?”