She had an instinctive consciousness that a woman ought to be, and might be, and was a match for the devil.
"I am sorry we have no coffee for your lordship," said the laird, "To tell the truth, we seldom take anything more than our country's porridge.

I hope you can take tea?
Our Grizzie's scons are good, with plenty of butter." His lordship had in the meantime taken another pull at the brandy-flask, and was growing more and more polite.
"The man would be hard to please," he said, "who would not be enticed to eat by such a display of good victuals.

Tea for me, before everything!--How am I to pretend to swallow the stuff ?" he murmured, rather than muttered, to himself.--"But," he went on aloud, "didn't that cheating rascal leave you--" He stopped abruptly, and the laird saw his eyes fixed upon something on the table, and following their look, saw it was a certain pepper-pot, of odd device--a piece of old china, in the shape of a clumsily made horse, with holes between the ears for the issue of the pepper.
"I see, my lord," he said, "you are amused with the pepper-pot.

It is a curious utensil, is it not?
It has been in the house a long time--longer than anybody knows.

Which of my great-grandmothers let it take her fancy, it is impossible to say; but I suppose the reason for its purchase, if not its manufacture, was, that a horse passant has been the crest of our family from time immemorial." "Curse the crest, and the horse too!" said his lordship.
The laird started.