He
played with his fish without thinking much about it. He worked
manfully at the steak. He gave another crumple to the tart, and left
it without a pang. But when the old man urged him, for the third
time, to take that pernicious draught with his cheese, he angrily
demanded a glass of beer. The old man toddled out of the room, and on
his return he proffered to him a diminutive glass of white spirit,
which he called usquebaugh. Phineas, happy to get a little whisky,
said nothing more about the beer, and so the dinner was over.
He rose so suddenly from his chair that the man did not dare to ask
him whether he would not sit over his wine. A suggestion that way was
indeed made, would he "visit the laird out o' hand, or would he bide
awee?" Phineas decided on visiting the laird out of hand, and was
at once led across the hall, down a back passage which he had never
before traversed, and introduced to the chamber which had ever been
known as the "laird's ain room." Here Robert Kennedy rose to receive
him.
Phineas knew the man's age well.
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