As soon as he and Lady Joan were seated at the supper-table, with
Grizzie to wait upon them, the laird and Cosmo left the kitchen,
and went to the spare-room, for the laird judged that, in the
temper and mistake her father was in, the lady would be more
comfortable in their absence.
"Cosmo," he said, standing with his back to the fire, when he had
again made it up, "I cannot help feeling as if I had known that man
before. But I can recall no circumstances, and it may be a mere
fancy. YOU have never seen him before, my boy, have you?"
"I don't think I have, papa; and I don't care if I never see him
again," answered Cosmo. "The lady is pretty, but not very pleasant,
I think, though she is a lord's daughter."
"Ah, but such a lord, Cosmo!" returned his father. "When a man goes
on drinking like that, he is no better than a cheese under the
spigot of a wine-cask; he lives to keep his body well soaked--that
it may be the nicer, or the nastier for the worms. Cosmo, my son,
don't you learn to drown your soul in your body, like the poor Duke
of Clarence in the wine-butt."
The material part of us ought to keep growing gradually thinner, to
let the soul out when its time comes, and the soul to keep growing
bigger and stronger every day, until it bursts the body at length,
as a growing nut does its shell; when, instead, the body grows
thicker and thicker, lessening the room within, it squeezes the
life out of the soul, and when such a man's body dies, his soul is
found a shrivelled thing, too poor to be a comfort to itself or to
anybody else.
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