``I dinna ken, sir,''---she replied in a dry _rev
che_
tone, which carried me back twenty years, ``I am
nane of thae heartsome landleddies that can tell
country cracks, and make themsells agreeable; and
I was ganging to put on a fire for you in the Red
Room; but if it is your will to stay here, he that
pays the lawing maun choose the lodging.''
I endeavoured to engage her in conversation;
but though she answered with a kind of stiff civility,
I could get her into no freedom of discourse
and she began to look at her wheel and at the door
more than once, as if she meditated a retreat. I
was obliged, therefore, to proceed to some special
questions that might have interest for a person,
whose ideas were probably of a very bounded description.
I looked round the apartment, being the same
in which I had last seen my poor mother. The
author of the family history, formerly mentioned,
had taken great credit to himself for the improvements
he had made in this same jointure-house of
Duntarkin, and how, upon his marriage, when his
mother took possession of the same as her jointure-house,
``to his great charges and expenses he
caused box the walls of the great parlour,'' (in
which I was now sitting,) ``empanel the same, and
plaster the roof, finishing the apartment with ane
concave chimney, and decorating the same with
pictures, and a barometer and thermometer.
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