She held out her hand to take leave. At the same moment there was a loud knock at the door of the room. Anne sank into the chair at her side, and uttered a faint cry of alarm. Arnold, perfectly impenetrable to all sense of his position, asked what there was to frighten her--and answered the knock in the two customary words: “Come in!” CHAPTER THE TENTH. MR. BISHOPRIGGS. THE knock at the door was repeated--a louder knock than before. “Are you deaf?” shouted Arnold. The door opened, little by little, an inch at a time. Mr. Bishopriggs appeared mysteriously, with the cloth for dinner over his arm, and with his second in command behind him, bearing “the furnishing of the table” (as it was called at Craig Fernie) on a tray. “What the deuce were you waiting for?” asked Arnold. “I told you to come in.” “And _I_ tauld _you,_” answered Mr. Bishopriggs, “that I wadna come in without knocking first. Eh, man!” he went on, dismissing his second in command, and laying the cloth with his own venerable hands, “d’ye think I’ve lived in this hottle in blinded eegnorance of hoo young married couples pass the time when they’re left to themselves? Twa knocks at the door--and an unco trouble in opening it, after that--is joost the least ye can do for them! Whar’ do ye think, noo, I’ll set the places for you and your leddy there?” Anne walked away to the window, in undisguised disgust. Arnold found Mr. Bishopriggs to be quite irresistible. He answered, humoring the joke, “One at the top and one at the bottom of the table, I suppose?” “One at tap and one at bottom?” repeated Mr. Bishopriggs, in high disdain. “De’il a bit of it! Baith yer chairs as close together as chairs can be. Hech! hech!--haven’t I caught ‘em, after goodness knows hoo many preleeminary knocks at the door, dining on their husbands’ knees, and steemulating a man’s appetite by feeding him at the fork’s end like a child? Eh!” sighed the sage of Craig Fernie, “it’s a short life wi’ that nuptial business, and a merry one! A mouth for yer billin’ and cooin’; and a’ the rest o’ yer days for wondering ye were ever such a fule, and wishing it was a’ to be done ower again.--Ye’ll be for a bottle o’ sherry wine, nae doot? and a drap toddy afterwards, to do yer digestin’ on?” Arnold nodded--and then, in obedience to a signal from Anne, joined her at the window. Mr. Bishopriggs looked after them attentively--observed that they were talking in whispers--and approved of that proceeding, as representing another of the established customs of young married couples at inns, in the presence of third persons appointed to wait on them.