“Sit ye down, Mr. Lowther, and make yourself at home,” exclaimed the hospitable Mr. Grunderson. “A knife and fork for this gentleman, Thomas; and look sharp about it. You’ll find this here as fine a bit of beef as ever was cut from an Aberdeen bullock; and there ain’t no bullocks equal to a Scotch short-horn, go where you will. Let me give you a slice out of the alderman’s walk, which was a name my father always gave to the undercut; and a very good father he was too, though he never thought of my sittin’ down to table upon the very spot where he built hisself a tool-house forty year ago, when you couldn’t have got six pound an acre per annum for any ground about here. There’s a pigeon-pie at the other end of the table, and there’s some of your foreign kickshaws,--cutlets a la curlpapers, and mutton-chops a la smashed potato, _I_ call ’em; for I’m not a young man, Mr. Lowther, and I can’t remember your _soubeeses_, and your _maintenongs_, and your _jardineers_, and so on, as my daughter can. We don’t have the men to wait at lunch, for my daughter says it isn’t manners; and I’m very glad it ain’t, for I can’t say I enjoy my meals when I have to take ’em with a couple of fellows shoving vegetable-dishes and sauce-boats at me every two minutes, and never shoving the right ones; for I’m blest if I ever knew ’em yet to shove me the cucumber before I’d half finished my salmon, though they do call themselves experienced servants. Howsomedever, if we must dine ally Rousse, and wrap our mutton-chops in greasy paper and call ’em maintennong, we must, and there’s an end of it; but I don’t mind confessing to you, Mr. Lowther, that this is the time I make _my_ dinner, and it’s no use frowning at me, Rosa, for I don’t care who knows it.” Mr. Lowther, whose luncheon generally consisted of a glass of seltzer-and-sherry and one small biscuit, escaped the infliction of one of Mr. Grunderson’s plates of beef by a judicious manœuvre, and helped himself to a morsel of pigeon-pie. But before doing so, he allowed his eyes to wander about the walls in contemplation of some impossible conglomerations of brown rockery and soapsud sky, which Mr. Grunderson called his Sallivaters; and thus gave Rosa time to dismiss her bottles and her plate, and to recover from her embarrassment.