“Who!—she!”—exclaimed Moniplies, as if surprised at the question; “they would need a lang spoon would sup with her, I trow. Always there is something put for her into the Tower, as they call it, whilk is a whigmaleery of a whirling-box, that turns round half on the tae side o' the wa', half on the tother.”
“I have seen the contrivance in foreign nunneries,” said the Lord of Glenvarloch. “And is it thus she receives her food?”
“They tell me something is put in ilka day, for fashion's sake,” replied the attendant; “but it's no to be supposed she would consume it, ony mair than the images of Bel and the Dragon consumed the dainty vivers that were placed before them. There are stout yeomen and chamber-queans in the house, enow to play the part of Lick-it-up-a', as well as the threescore and ten priests of Bel, besides their wives and children.”
“And she is never seen in the family but when the hour of prayer arrives?” said the master.
“Never, that I hear of,” replied the servant.
“It is singular,” said Nigel Olifaunt, musing. “Were it not for the ornaments which she wears, and still more for her attendance upon the service of the Protestant Church, I should know what to think, and should believe her either a Catholic votaress, who, for some cogent reason, was allowed to make her cell here in London, or some unhappy Popish devotee, who was in the course of undergoing a dreadful penance. As it is, I know not what to deem of it.”
His reverie was interrupted by the linkboy knocking at the door of honest John Christie, whose wife came forth with “quips, and becks, and wreathed smiles,” to welcome her honoured guest on his return to his apartment.