“No, my lady.”

“I am not at all sure, Hopkins, that I was right in declining to consider the message Mrs. Inchbare sent to me about the poultry.  Why shouldn’t she offer to take any fowls that I can spare off my hands?  She is a respectable woman; and it is important to me to live on good terms with al my neighbors, great and small.  Has she got a poultry-yard of her own at Craig Fernie?”

“Yes, my lady.  And beautifully kept, I am told.”

“I really don’t see—­on reflection, Hopkins—­why I should hesitate to deal with Mrs. Inchbare. (I don’t think it beneath me to sell the game killed on my estate to the poulterer.) What was it she wanted to buy?  Some of my black Spanish fowls?”

“Yes, my lady.  Your ladyship’s black Spaniards are famous all round the neighborhood.  Nobody has got the breed.  And Mrs. Inchbare—­”

“Wants to share the distinction of having the breed with me,” said Lady Lundie.  “I won’t appear ungracious.  I will see her myself, as soon as I am a little better, and tell her that I have changed my mind.  Send one of the men to Craig Fernie with a message.  I can’t keep a trifling matter of this sort in my memory—­send him at once, or I may forget it.  He is to say I am willing to see Mrs. Inchbare, about the fowls, the first time she finds it convenient to come this way.”

“I am afraid, my lady—­Mrs. Inchbare’s heart is so set on the black Spaniards—­she will find it convenient to come this way at once as fast as her feet can carry her.”

“In that case, you must take her to the gardener’s wife.  Say she is to have some eggs—­on condition, of course, of paying the price for them.  If she does come, mind I hear of it.”

Hopkins withdrew.  Hopkins’s mistress reclined on her comfortable pillows and fanned herself gently.  The vindictive smile reappeared on her face.  “I fancy I shall be well enough to see Mrs. Inchbare,” she thought to herself.  “And it is just possible that the conversation may get beyond the relative merits of her poultry-yard and mine.”

A lapse of little more than two hours proved Hopkins’s estimate of the latent enthusiasm in Mrs. Inchbare’s character to have been correctly formed.  The eager landlady appeared at Windygates on the heels of the returning servant.  Among the long list of human weaknesses, a passion for poultry seems to have its practical advantages (in the shape of eggs) as compared with the more occult frenzies for collecting snuff-boxes and fiddles, and amassing autographs and old postage-stamps.  When the mistress of Craig Fernie was duly announced to the mistress of Windygates, Lady Lundie developed a sense of humor for the first time in her life.  Her ladyship was feebly merry (the result, no doubt, of the exhilarating properties of the red lavender draught) on the subject of Mrs. Inchbare and the Spanish fowls.