"Let me attend to this business," said Godfrey McCulloch, suddenly alive, and forestalling Stair Garland. "Step this way, minister."
And while the session clerk, cross-legged like a Turk on the sand, made his entries with much dipping of ink out of a tax-collector's bottle swung from his breast pocket, weird screechings of goose-quill, and dabbings of pounce box, the sound of confused argumentation came from the other group.
"I tell ye I will not risk the scandal for less than half-a-dozen kegs--all the best Hollands--cheap at the price. Think of the Presbytery!"
"Minister, the thing is done and in your presence. I will promise no such quantity. But three of Hollands and three of Isle of Man brandy, as was agreed upon. Consider, it will be worse, for you to be denounced as art and part in an irregular marriage--a laird's daughter, too--a pretty-like thing to come before the Presbytery and you the moderator!"
"Let it be as you will, Godfrey McCulloch, but if ye have a spark of human kindness in your hard heart let it be Hollands! Your Isle of Man brandy agrees but ill with my stammack, and if I dee o't my ghost will haunt ye. I will preach to ye, one by one, all my forty sermons on the King's birthday!"
"Hollands let it be--six kegs at the next run, only lift the interdict. I would rather be hanged at once and be done with it."
"You are not polite, young man," said the minister. "The sermons have been pronounced excellent by the very best judges, but I was right in supposing that you would not care to listen to forty of the best sermons ever preached! Six of Hollands be it then, lad, and put in the auld place--I shall see that the clerk is duly paid to hold his tongue! _Whom God hath joined, let no man put asunder!_ I nearly forgot, and indeed it is in nowise necessary, being but a Popish formula. Guid nicht to ye, and mind the Hollands!"
The breeze quickened from the south. The lugger sped through the water, and Stair Garland still sat dazed. Never had any man felt such a fool. Here he was firmly and legally wedded, and he dare not even address a word to his bride. He had spoken no syllable of gladness or affection--triple dolt--quadruple fool--prize-winner among idiots! He had nothing to say--he could say nothing. Nor was it the presence of a third person which prevented him. Perhaps, rather, something in Patsy's eye, and, though that he would not acknowledge, a lurking grimness in the smile about the wicks of Godfrey's mouth.