thou hast courage and caution to stand by thee in thy wooing."



CHAPTER VI.

Never to man shall Catharine give her hand.

Taming of the Shrew.


The breakfast was served, and the thin soft cakes, made of flour
and honey according to the family receipt, were not only commended
with all the partiality of a father and a lover, but done liberal
justice to in the mode which is best proof of cake as well
as pudding. They talked, jested, and laughed. Catharine, too, had
recovered her equanimity where the dames and damsels of the period
were apt to lose theirs--in the kitchen, namely, and in the
superintendence of household affairs, in which she was an adept. I
question much if the perusal of Seneca for as long a period would
have had equal effect in composing her mind.

Old Dorothy sat down at the board end, as was the homespun fashion
of the period; and so much were the two men amused with their own
conversation, and Catharine occupied either in attending to them
or with her own reflections, that the old woman was the first who
observed the absence of the boy Conachar.

"It is true," said the master glover; "go call him, the idle Highland
loon. He was not seen last night during the fray neither, at least