"
"Mind your victuals, Sir Mungo," said the earl; "they get cold while
you talk." "Troth, and that needsna, my lord," said the knight; "your
lordship's dinners seldom scald one's mouth--the serving-men are
turning auld, like oursells, my lord, and it is far between the
kitchen and the ha'."
With this little explosion of his spleen, Sir Mungo remained
satisfied, until the dishes were removed, when, fixing his eyes on the
brave new doublet of Lord Dalgarno, he complimented him on his
economy, pretending to recognise it as the same which his father had
worn in Edinburgh in the Spanish ambassador's time. Lord Dalgarno, too
much a man of the world to be moved by any thing from such a quarter,
proceeded to crack some nuts with great deliberation, as he replied,
that the doublet was in some sort his father's, as it was likely to
cost him fifty pounds some day soon. Sir Mungo forthwith proceeded in
his own way to convey this agreeable intelligence to the earl,
observing, that his son was a better maker of bargains than his
lordship, for he had bought a doublet as rich as that his lordship
wore when the Spanish ambassador was at Holyrood, and it had cost him
but fifty pounds Scots;--"that was no fool's bargain, my lord."
"Pounds sterling, if you please, Sir Mungo," answered the earl,
calmly; "and a fool's bargain it is, in all the tenses. Dalgarno WAS a
fool when he bought--I _will_ be a fool when I pay--and you, Sir
Mungo, craving your pardon, _are_ a fool _in praesenti_, for speaking
of what concerns you not.
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