CHAPTER FOURTEENTH.
-- Life, with you, Glows in the brain and dances in the arteries; 'Tis like the wine some joyous guest hath quaffed, That glads the heart and elevates the fancy: Mine is the poor residuum of the cup, Vapid, and dull, and tasteless, only soiling, With its base dregs, the vessel that contains it.
Old Play.
"Now, only think what a man my brother is, Mr.Blattergowl, for a wise man and a learned man, to bring this Yerl into our house without speaking a word to a body! And there's the distress of thae Mucklebackits--we canna get a fin o' fish--and we hae nae time to send ower to Fairport for beef, and the mutton's but new killed--and that silly fliskmahoy, Jenny Rintherout, has taen the exies, and done naething but laugh and greet, the skirl at the tail o' the guffaw, for twa days successfully--and now we maun ask that strange man, that's as grand and as grave as the Yerl himsell, to stand at the sideboard! and I canna gang into the kitchen to direct onything, for he's hovering there, making some pousowdie* for my Lord, for he doesna eat like ither folk neither--And how to sort the strange servant man at dinner time--I am sure, Mr.Blattergowl, a'thegither, it passes my judgment." * Pousowdie,--Miscellaneous mess.
"Truly, Miss Griselda," replied the divine, "Monkbarns was inconsiderate.

He should have taen a day to see the invitation, as they do wi' the titular's condescendence in the process of valuation and sale.

But the great man could not have come on a sudden to ony house in this parish where he could have been better served with vivers--that I must say--and also that the steam from the kitchen is very gratifying to my nostrils;--and if ye have ony household affairs to attend to, Mrs.
Griselda, never make a stranger of me--I can amuse mysell very weel with the larger copy of Erskine's Institutes." And taking down from the window-seat that amusing folio, (the Scottish Coke upon Littleton), he opened it, as if instinctively, at the tenth title of Book Second, "of Teinds or Tythes," and was presently deeply wrapped up in an abstruse discussion concerning the temporality of benefices.
The entertainment, about which Miss Oldbuck expressed so much anxiety, was at length placed upon the table; and the Earl of Glenallan, for the first time since the date of his calamity, sat at a stranger's board, surrounded by strangers.

He seemed to himself like a man in a dream, or one whose brain was not fully recovered from the effects of an intoxicating potion.

Relieved, as he had that morning been, from the image of guilt which had so long haunted his imagination, he felt his sorrows as a lighter and more tolerable load, but was still unable to take any share in the conversation that passed around him.