“Just in his ordinary, gude gentleman—asking for you, Maister Mordaunt; ye are ower far and ower late in your walks, young gentleman.”
“Then the dark hour has passed, Swertha?”
“In troth has it, Maister Mordaunt,” answered the governante; “and your father is very reasonably good-natured for him, poor gentleman. I spake to him twice yesterday without his speaking first; and the first time he answered me as civil as you could do, and the neist time he bade me no plague him; and then, thought I, three times were aye canny, so I spake to him again for luck’s-sake, and he called me a chattering old devil; but it was quite and clean in a civil sort of way.”
“Enough, enough, Swertha,” answered Mordaunt; “and now get up, and find me something to eat, for I have dined but poorly.”
“Then you have been at the new folk’s at Stourburgh; for there is no another house in a’ the Isles but they wad hae gi’en ye the best share of the best they had. Saw ye aught of Norna of the Fitful-head? She went to Stourburgh this morning, and returned to the town at night.”
“Returned!—then she is here? How could she travel three leagues and better in so short a time?”
“Wha kens how she travels?” replied Swertha; “but I heard her tell the Ranzelman wi’ my ain lugs, that she intended that day to have gone on to Burgh-Westra, to speak with Minna Troil, but she had seen that at Stourburgh, (indeed she said at Harfra, for she never calls it by the other name of Stourburgh,) that sent her back to our town. But gang your ways round, and ye shall have plenty of supper—ours is nae toom pantry, and still less a locked ane, though my master be a stranger, and no just that tight in the upper rigging, as the Ranzelman says.”
Mordaunt walked round to the kitchen accordingly, where Swertha’s care speedily accommodated him with a plentiful, though coarse meal, which indemnified him for the scanty hospitality he had experienced at Stourburgh.
In the morning, some feelings of fatigue made young Mertoun later than usual in leaving his bed; so that, contrary to what was the ordinary case, he found his father in the apartment where they eat, and which served them indeed for every common purpose, save that of a bedchamber or of a kitchen. The son greeted the father in mute reverence, and waited until he should address him.
“You were absent yesterday, Mordaunt?” said his father. Mordaunt’s absence had lasted a week and more; but he had often observed that his father never seemed to notice how time passed during the period when he was affected with his sullen vapours. He assented to what the elder Mr. Mertoun had said.