“I will take it,” she said. “But what if he should be angry?”
“If her lord pe angry, Tuncan is angry too,” answered the piper.
Malcolm followed Lady Florimel to the door.
“Put it as saft as ye can, my leddy,” he whispered. “I canna bide to anger fowk mair than maun be.”
“I shall give the message precisely as your grandfather gave it to me,” said Florimel, and walked away.
While they sat at dinner the next evening, she told her father from the head of the table, all about her visit to the piper, and ended with the announcement of the condition—word for word— on which the old man would consent to a reconciliation.
Could such a proposal have come from an equal whom he had insulted, the marquis would hardly have waited for a challenge: to have done a wrong was nothing; to confess it would be disgrace. But here the offended party was of such ludicrously low condition, and the proposal therefore so ridiculous, that it struck the marquis merely as a yet more amusing prolongation of the joke. Hence his reception of it was with uproarious laughter, in which all his visitors joined.
“Damn the old wind-bag!” said the marquis.
“Damn the knife that made the mischief,” said Lady Florimel.
When the merriment had somewhat subsided, Lord Meikleham, the youth of soldierly aspect, would have proposed whipping the highland beggar, he said, were it not for the probability the old clothes-horse would fall to pieces; whereupon Lady Florimel recommended him to try it on the young fisherman, who might possibly hold together; whereat the young lord looked both mortified and spiteful.