I have never felt
such a glow of gratitude as then filled my heart to the staid cleric.
That he was of near kin to Miss Elspeth made it tenfold sweeter. I
forgot my old clothes and my uncouth looks; I forgot, too, my
irritation with the brocaded gentleman. If her kin thought me worthy, I
cared not a bodle for the rest of mankind.
Presently we rose from table, and Colonel Beverley summoned us to the
Green Parlour, where Miss Elspeth was brewing a dish of chocolate, then
a newfangled luxury in the dominion. I would fain have made my escape,
for if my appearance was unfit for a dining-hall, it was an outrage in
a lady's withdrawing-room. But Doctor Blair came forward to me and
shook me warmly by the hand, and was full of gossip about Clydesdale,
from which apparently he had been absent these twenty years. "My niece
bade me bring you to her," he said. "She, poor child, is a happy exile,
but she has now and then an exile's longings. A Scots tongue is
pleasant in her ear."
So I perforce had to follow him into a fine room with an oaken floor,
whereon lay rich Smyrna rugs and the skins of wild beasts from the
wood. There was a prodigious number of soft couches of flowered damask,
and little tables inlaid with foreign woods and jeweller's work.
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