“That would depend upon her size and weight, Janet, lass.  Now, had you a tocher like that, it would be a gey business, I think,—­fourteen potato-stones at the very least, I would say, eh?”—­and he must get quit of the mouthful before he could finish—­“Eh, Janet?”

“And if you go on at that rate with my pork, you will not, by-and-by, be much behind me.  But, guid faith, Aminadab, I’m not ashamed, lad, of my size.  A poor, smoke-dried, shrivelled cook shames her guid savoury dishes, intended to fatten mankind and make them jolly.  But you are right about the offer of the Nabob.  The creature was small, and light, and lithe, and could not weigh much.  But then, think of the jewels!  These did not depend upon her weight, but upon their own light.  Oh, what diamonds, and rubies, and pearls as big as marbles!  I have looked at them till my eyes reeled with the light of them; and no wonder, when I have heard them valued at a hundred thousand guineas—­and to think of all that being held in a little box!  There is one necklace worth fifteen thousand itself.”

“And yet a small neck, too, maybe?—­’And thou shalt make a necklace to fit her neck,’ said the Lord.  It would not be half the girth of yours, Mrs. M’Pherson?”

“Ay, Aminadab; not a half, nor anything like it.  But don’t stop me again, lad, or I’ll stop the pork. (A pause.) Ah, well, I fear it was the shining jewels, and not the black face, did the business on my master’s side.  And, of course, he would be all smiles at the Nabob’s court; for, Aminadab, my lad, there never was on the face of God’s earth a man who could so soon change the horrid dark scowl into the very light of sunshine as Mr. Fletcher.  I have seen him, when in company with Kincaldrum, and Dudhope, and Gleneagles, and the rest, laughing till his face was as red as the sun, then, all of a sudden, when some of his moods came over him, turn just like a fiend new come out of—­oh, I’ll just say it out, Aminadab, though ye be of the Seceders—­just hell, lad.”

“But, good mother Janet—­”

“Mother your own mother, man, till you be a father, Aminadab.  Have I not told you to let me go on?  There’s no honour in a mother:  that sow you are eating was the mother six times of thirteen at each litter; and I think that’s about seventy-eight.  Mother, forsooth!  Ay, and yet you’ll see a beggar wretch, clad in tanterwallops—­rags is owre guid a word—­coming to Logie door, and looking as if she had the right to demand meal from me, merely because she has two at her feet and one in her arms.  Such honourable gaberlunzies get no meal from me.  My master was keen for the match; but the Nabob was shy of the white face.  And here’s a curious thing—­I got it from my lady herself.  She said the Nabob, her papa, as she called him—­for, just like us here, they have kindly words and real human feelings—­made a bargain with my master, that if he took her away out of India to where the big woman they call the Company lives, he would be kind to her, and ’treat her as he would do a child which is rocked in a cradle.’”