ill not be so confused for the matter of his
nonsense; but you must have had a warm walk beneath this broiling
sun--would you take anything?--a glass of balm-wine?"

Ere Lovel could answer, the Antiquary interposed. "Aroint thee, witch!
wouldst thou poison my guests with thy infernal decoctions? Dost thou
not remember how it fared with the clergyman whom you seduced to partake
of that deceitful beverage?"

"O fy, fy, brother!--Sir Arthur, did you ever hear the like?--he must have
everything his ain way, or he will invent such stories--But there goes
Jenny to ring the old bell to tell us that the dinner is ready."

Rigid in his economy, Mr. Oldbuck kept no male servant. This he
disguised under the pretext that the masculine sex was too noble to
be employed in those acts of personal servitude, which, in all early
periods of society, were uniformly imposed on the female. "Why,"
would he say, "did the boy, Tam Rintherout, whom, at my wise sister's
instigation, I, with equal wisdom, took upon trial--why did he pilfer
apples, take birds' nests, break glasses, and ultimately steal my
spectacles, except that he felt that noble emulation which swells in the
bosom of the masculine sex, which has conducted him to Flanders with
a musket on his shoulder, and doubtless will promote him to a glorious
halbert, or even to the gallows? And why does this girl, his full
sister, Jenny Rintherout, move in the same vocation with safe and
noiseless step--shod, or unshod--soft as the pace of a cat, and docile as
a spaniel--Why? but because she is in her vocation. Let them minister to
us, Sir Arthur,--let them minister, I say,--it's the only thing they are
fit for. All ancient legislators, from Lycurgus to Mahommed, corruptly
called Mahomet, agree in putting them in their proper and subordinate
rank, and it is only the crazy heads of our old chivalrous ancestors
that erected their Dulcineas into despotic princesses."

Miss Wardour protested loudly against this ungallant doctrine; but the
bell now rung for dinner.

"Let me do all the offices of fair courtesy to so fair an antagonist,"
said the old gentleman, offering his arm. "I remember, Miss Wardour,
Mahommed (vulgarly Mahomet) had some hesitation about the mode
of summoning his Moslemah to prayer. He rejected bells as used by
Christians, trumpets as the summons of the Guebres, and finally adopted
the human voice. I have had equal doubt concerning my dinner-call.
Gongs, now in present use,