Coal was carted from the nearest sea-port, though not in such
quantity as the laird would have liked, for money was as scarce as
ever, and that is to put its lack pretty strongly. Everything
available for firewood was collected, and, if of any size, put
under saw and axe, then stored in the house. Good preparation was
thus made for the siege of the winter.
In their poverty, partly no doubt from consideration, they seemed
to be much forgotten. The family was like an old thistle-head,
withering on its wintry stalk, alone in a wind-swept field. All the
summer through not a single visitor, friend or stranger, had slept
in the house. A fresh face was more of a wonder to Cosmo than to
desert-haunting Abraham. The human heart, like the human body, can
live without much variety to feed on, but its house is built on a
lordly scale for hospitality, and is capable of welcoming every new
face as a new revelation. Steadily Cosmo went to his day's work
with the master, steadily returned to his home; saw nothing new,
yet learned day by day, as he went and came, to love yet more, not
the faces of the men and women only, but the aspects of the country
in which he was born, to read the lines and shades of its varying
beauty: if it was not luxuriant enough to satisfy his ideal, it had
yet endless loveliness to disclose to him who already loved enough
to care to understand it. When the autumn came, it made him sad,
for it was not in harmony with the forward look of his young life,
which, though not ambitious, was vaguely expectant.
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