It was accordingly placed before Rory, who, all impatience, plunged his knife into it--murder, what a _hautgout_, and no wonder; for it actually proved to be a guava pudding, that the drunken cook had stuffed into the sheep's stomach! However, we had all a good laugh, doing great honour, notwithstanding, to an excellent dinner; and when we began to enjoy ourselves over our wine, Dr Tozy and Twig, aided and abetted by Flamingo, amused us exceedingly by the fun they extracted from our friend Rory. Mr Macgregor not being quite so polished a gentleman as his Majesty George IV., had been rather particular, shortly after this, in his notice of Mr Twig's coat--the colour of which some how did not please him. "Noo, I taresay, Maister Twick, you ca' that plue--a plue coat--put I think it mair plack tan plue." "Why, Mac, you are not so far wrong, it is more black than blue." "Ah, so I thought," quoth Rory. "And I'll give you the reason, if you promise not to tell," said Twig. "It is the first trial piece of my new patent cloth." "Your patent cloth!" whispered the last of the Goths, "have _you_ a patent for cloth." "To be sure I have--that never loses the colour, and is as impervious to wet as a lawyer's wig, or a duck's wing." "It al no pe a Mackintosh, will it?" "Mackintosh!" exclaimed his jovial friend--"Mackintosh!--why Charley cannot hold the candle to me--no, no, it is the first spun out of--here lend me your lugs," and he laid hold of the Highland man's ear, so as to draw his head half across the table in a most ludicrous fashion. "It is made entirely out of negro wool." "Necroo wool?" rejoined Rory, lying back in his chair, holding up his hands, and looking to the roof, with a most absurd expression of face, half credulous, half doubting--"wool from tae veritable neger's heads, tid you say?" "Negro-head wool, Rory, every fibre of it. The last bale I sent home was entirely composed of the autumn shearing of my own people at the Dream--I sent it to some manufacturing friends of mine in Halifax"--and, holding out his sleeve--"there, the Duke of Devonshire patronises it, I assure ye--nothing else will go down next season at Almack's." "Allmac's?" exclaimed Rory, "to you mean to say it will shoopersede tae forty-second tartan?" "Ay, and ninety-second too. However, I find it will not take on indigo freely, in consequence of the essential oil." "Oil!" said Rory; "creeshy prutes." "So, in consequence, I intend after this to confine the manufacture to _black_ cloth, which will require no dye you know; if you choose to contract, Rory, I will give you half-a-crown per pound for all you can deliver during the next year--or threepence a-fleece--_head_, I mean--and that is the top of the market for Spanish wool--but it must be clean--free of--you understand?"