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 I saw him not.