But time, that waits on no one’s fancy or caprice, warned her that she must not linger over a scene which she afterwards visited with renewed pleasure, but gave her a gentle hint, that there was work to be done at home—that she had better make her purchases and proceed to business.
She returned, therefore, to her lodgings in high spirits, despatching Jim to the greengrocer’s in the next street, and then followed Hannah and her basket into Mrs. Waddel’s kitchen.
“Marcy me! what ha’ ye got, the noo?” said Mistress Waddel, lifting the napkin from the basket: “meat enough, I declare, to last the hale week. The weather’s owr hot, I’m thinkin’, for a’ they to keep sweet sae lang.”
“Mrs. Waddel, I expect two gentlemen to dinner, particular friends of Mr. Lyndsay; and I want you to cook these things for me as well as you can,” said Flora coaxingly.
“Twa’ gentlemen, did ye say?—There’s ten times mair in yon basket than twa gentlemen can eat!”
“Of course there is; but we cannot stint our guests.”
“Whist, woman!” cried Mrs. Waddel, “it makes my heid ache only to think about a’ that roast an’ boil, an’ boil an’ roast!”
“Pray, how did you contrive to cook for Lady Weyms?” asked Flora, rather indignantly.
“Gudeness gracious! Do ye think, that my Leddy Weyms cared for the cooking o’ the like o’ me? When his late majestie, God bless him, honoured our auld toon wi’ his preesence, folk were glad to get a deecent place to cover their heids, an’ war in no wise owr particlar, sae they could get lodged ava.”
“So I should think, when a titled lady put up with such as these; where the mistress engages to cook for her lodgers, and has not a whole pot in her culinary establishment.”