—Hector, I love thee,
But never more be officer of mine.”
“Why, really, sir, I am afraid I should make a bad figure in a regiment of your raising.”
“At least, Hector, I would have you despatch your camp train, and travel expeditus, or relictis impedimentis. You cannot conceive how I am annoyed by this beast—she commits burglary, I believe, for I heard her charged with breaking into the kitchen after all the doors were locked, and eating up a shoulder of mutton. “—(Our readers, if they chance to remember Jenny Rintherout’s precaution of leaving the door open when she went down to the fisher’s cottage, will probably acquit poor Juno of that aggravation of guilt which the lawyers call a claustrum fregit, and which makes the distinction between burglary and privately stealing. )
“I am truly sorry, sir,” said Hector, “that Juno has committed so much disorder; but Jack Muirhead, the breaker, was never able to bring her under command. She has more travel than any bitch I ever knew, but”—
“Then, Hector, I wish the bitch would travel herself out of my grounds.”
“We will both of us retreat to-morrow, or to-day, but I would not willingly part from my mother’s brother in unkindness about a paltry pipkin.”
“O brother! brother!” ejaculated Miss M’Intyre, in utter despair at this vituperative epithet.
“Why, what would you have me call it?” continued Hector; “it was just such a thing as they use in Egypt to cool wine, or sherbet, or water;—I brought home a pair of them—I might have brought home twenty.”
“What!” said Oldbuck, “shaped such as that your dog threw down?”
“Yes, sir, much such a sort of earthen jar as that which was on the sideboard. They are in my lodgings at Fairport; we brought a parcel of them to cool our wine on the passage—they answer wonderfully well. If I could think they would in any degree repay your loss, or rather that they could afford you pleasure, I am sure I should be much honoured by your accepting them.”