The kitchen was small, and hot, and stifling, for the July sun, very imperfectly kept out by a torn curtain of checked linen and a broken shutter, accomplished what Miss Jean’s penurious handful of fire scarcely could have done. A small round deal table stood before the fire-place; opposite to it was the door of Miss Jean’s “concealed bed,” which she closed in passing; while between the fire-place and the window a wooden “bunker,” dirty and wounded, filled up all the wall. Miss Jean herself sat by the fireside in a high wooden elbow-chair, furnished with one or two loose thin cushions, which scarcely interposed the least degree of softness between the sharp corners of the chair, and the sharper corners of her poor worn, angular frame. A little black teapot stood by the fire--for thrift Miss Jean never emptied this teapot; it always stood baking there, and always had its scanty spoonful of new tea added to the accumulation of half-boiled leaves, till it would bear no further addition, and compelled a reluctant cleaning out. But on the top of Miss Jean’s bunker, a strange contrast to the penurious meanness of all her other arrangements, lay a great ham, enveloped in greasy paper, and roasting slowly in an atmosphere to which it was very little accustomed. A certain look of recognition given by Uncle Sandy to this very respectable edible, and an evident importance with which he stood endowed in the eyes of Miss Jean, explained how it came here--a peace-offering from Allenders to the wealthy miser. “It was weel dune of ye, Sandy, to gar them mind the auld wife--very weel dune; and ane canna say what may come o’t. I’m no meaning in siller,” added Miss Jean, hurriedly. “I wadna encourage a mercenary spirit--ye ken that--but in guid will, Sandy--guid will; and guid will’s a grand thing amang relations; and the ham’s no ill eating. They would get it cheap yonder away noo--far cheaper than the like of you or me?” “You see,” said Uncle Sandy--with elaborate skill, as he thought, good simple heart, “they would have nane but the very finest, it being for you, Miss Jean, and so I cannot undertake to say it was cheap--when ye get the best of anything, it’s seldom to call cheap.”