The dining-room in this weather would freeze the very
marrow of your bones."
"And look you! it don't want freezing," said his lordship, with a
shudder. "The kitchen to be sure!--I don't desire a better place.
I'll be hanged if I enter this room again!" he muttered to
himself--not too low to be heard. "My tastes are quite as simple as
yours, Mr. Warlock, though I have not had the same opportunity of
indulging them."
He seemed rapidly returning to the semblance of what he would have
called a gentleman.
He rose, and the laird led the way. Lord Mergwain followed; and
Cosmo, coming immediately behind, heard him muttering to himself
all down the stairs: "Mere confounded nonsense! Nothing whatever
but the drink!--I must say I prefer the day--light after all.--Yes!
that's the drawing-room.--What's done's done--and more than done,
for it can't be done again!"
It was a nipping and an eager air into which they stepped from the
great door. The storm had ceased, but the snow lay much deeper, and
all the world seemed folded in a lucent death, of which the white
mounds were the graves. All the morning it had been snowing busily,
for no footsteps were between the two doors but those of Cosmo.
When they reached the kitchen, there was a grand fire on the
hearth, and a great pot on the fire, in which the porridge Grizzie
had just made was swelling in huge bubbles that burst in sighs. Old
Grizzie was bright as the new day, bustling and deedy.
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