“Your worship,” said I, “makes me more proud than I well know what to do with.  Of all the things that please and lead us into happy sleep at night, the first and chiefest is to think that we have pleased a visitor.”

“Then, John, thou hast deserved good sleep; for I am not pleased easily.  But although our family is not so high now as it hath been, I have enough of the gentleman left to be pleased when good people try me.  My father, Sir Ensor, was better than I in this great element of birth, and my son Carver is far worse. Aetas parentum, what is it, my boy?  I hear that you have been at a grammar-school.”

“So I have, your worship, and at a very good one; but I only got far enough to make more tail than head of Latin.”

“Let that pass,” said the Counsellor; “John, thou art all the wiser.”  And the old man shook his hoary locks, as if Latin had been his ruin.  I looked at him sadly, and wondered whether it might have so ruined me, but for God’s mercy in stopping it.

CHAPTER LII

THE WAY TO MAKE THE CREAM RISE

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That night the reverend Counsellor, not being in such state of mind as ought to go alone, kindly took our best old bedstead, carved in panels, well enough, with the woman of Samaria.  I set him up, both straight and heavy, so that he need but close both eyes, and keep his mouth just open; and in the morning he was thankful for all that he could remember.

I, for my part, scarcely knew whether he really had begun to feel goodwill towards us, and to see that nothing else could be of any use to him; or whether he was merely acting, so as to deceive us.  And it had struck me, several times, that he had made a great deal more of the spirit he had taken than the quantity would warrant, with a man so wise and solid.  Neither did I quite understand a little story which Lorna told me, how that in the night awaking, she had heard, or seemed to hear, a sound of feeling in her room; as if there had been some one groping carefully among the things within her drawers or wardrobe-closet.  But the noise had ceased at once, she said, when she sat up in bed and listened; and knowing how many mice we had, she took courage and fell asleep again.

After breakfast, the Counsellor (who looked no whit the worse for schnapps, but even more grave and venerable) followed our Annie into the dairy, to see how we managed the clotted cream, of which he had eaten a basinful.  And thereupon they talked a little; and Annie thought him a fine old gentleman, and a very just one; for he had nobly condemned the people who spoke against Tom Faggus.

“Your honour must plainly understand,” said Annie, being now alone with him, and spreading out her light quick hands over the pans, like butterflies, “that they are brought in here to cool, after being set in the basin-holes, with the wood-ash under them, which I showed you in the back-kitchen.  And they must have very little heat, not enough to simmer even; only just to make the bubbles rise, and the scum upon the top set thick; and after that, it clots as firm—­oh, as firm as my two hands be.”