Scotch hash, and fried eggs and bacon, and a turkey, and a boiled leg of
mutton and turnips, and _pratees_ the best, and well boiled; and I hope,
your honour, that's enough for a soldier's dinner, that's not nice.

_Mr. H._ Enough for a soldier's dinner! ay, gude truth, my lass; and more
than enough for Andrew Hope, who is no ways nice. But, tell me, have you no
one to help you here, to dress all this?

_Biddy._ Sorrow one, to do a hand's turn for me but myself, plase your
honour; for the daughter of the house is too fine to put her hand to any
thing in life: but she's in the room there within, beyond, if you would
like to see her--a fine lady she is!

_Mr. H._ A fine lady, is she? Weel, fine or coarse, I shall like to see
her,--and weel I may and must, for I had a brother once I luved as my life;
and four years back that brother fell sick here, on his road to the north,
and was kindly tended here at the inn at Bannow; and he charged me, puir
lad, on his death-bed, if ever fate should quarter me in Bannow, to inquire
for his gude friends at the inn, and to return them his thanks; and so I'm
fain to do, and will not sleep till I've done so.--But tell me first, my
kind lassy,--for I see you are a kind lassy,--tell me, has not this house
had a change of fortune, and fallen to decay of late? for the inn at Bannow
was pictured to me as a bra' neat place.

_Biddy._ Ah! that was, may-be, the time the Larkens had it?

_Mr. H._ The Larkens!--that was the very name: it warms my heart to hear
the sound of it.

_Biddy._ Ay, and quite another sort of an inn this was, I hear talk,