‘Never mind that being out o’ sorts, Captain,’ said Mrs. Mac-Guffog, who now followed them into the room; then, turning her back to the prisoner, with as much delicacy as the action admitted, she whipped from her knee her ferret garter, and applied it to splicing and fastening the broken bed-post; then used more pins than her apparel could well spare to fasten up the bed-curtains in festoons; then shook the bed-clothes into something like form; then flung over all a tattered patch-work quilt, and pronounced that things were now ‘something purpose-like.’ ‘And there’s your bed, Captain,’ pointing to a massy four-posted hulk, which, owing to the inequality of the floor, that had sunk considerably (the house, though new, having been built by contract), stood on three legs, and held the fourth aloft as if pawing the air, and in the attitude of advancing like an elephant passant upon the panel of a coach,--‘there’s your bed and the blankets; but if ye want sheets, or bowster, or pillow, or ony sort o’ nappery for the table, or for your hands, ye ‘ll hae to speak to me about it, for that’s out o’ the gudeman’s line (Mac-Guffog had by this time left the room, to avoid, probably, any appeal which might be made to him upon this new exaction), and he never engages for ony thing like that.’ ‘In God’s name,’ said Bertram, ‘let me have what is decent, and make any charge you please.’ ‘Aweel, aweel, that’s sune settled; we’ll no excise you neither, though we live sae near the custom-house. And I maun see to get you some fire and some dinner too, I’se warrant; but your dinner will be but a puir ane the day, no expecting company that would be nice and fashious.’ So saying, and in all haste, Mrs. Mac-Guffog fetched a scuttle of live coals, and having replenished ‘the rusty grate, unconscious of a fire’ for months before, she proceeded with unwashed hands to arrange the stipulated bed-linen (alas, how different from Ailie Dinmont’s!), and, muttering to herself as she discharged her task, seemed, in inveterate spleen of temper, to grudge even those accommodations for which she was to receive payment. At length, however, she departed, grumbling between her teeth, that ‘she wad rather lock up a haill ward than be fiking about thae niff-naffy gentles that gae sae muckle fash wi’ their fancies.’