In fact, the miserable guise of her new lodger now overcame the dame's curiosity to enquire after the fate of her earlier acquaintance, and she gave her instant and exclusive attention to Mr. Touchwood, with many exclamations, while aiding him to perform the task of ablution and abstersion. Her two fugitive handmaidens had by this time returned to the kitchen, and endeavoured to suppress a smuggled laugh at the recollection of their mistress's panic, by acting very officiously in Mr. Touchwood's service. By dint of washing and drying, the token of the sable stains was at length removed, and the veteran became, with some difficulty, satisfied that he had been more dirtied and frightened than hurt. Tyrrel, in the meantime, stood looking on with wonder, imagining that he beheld in the features which emerged from a mask of mud, the countenance of an old friend. After the operation was ended, he could not help addressing himself to Mr. Touchwood, to demand whether he had not the pleasure to see a friend, to whom he had been obliged when at Smyrna, for some kindness respecting his money matters? "Not worth speaking of--not worth speaking of," said Touchwood, hastily. "Glad to see you, though--glad to see you.--Yes, here I am; you will find me the same good-natured old fool that I was at Smyrna--never look how I am to get in money again--always laying it out. Never mind--it was written in my forehead, as the Turk says.--I will go up now and change my dress--you will sup with me when I come back--Mrs. Dods will toss us up something--a brandered fowl will be best, Mrs. Dods, with some mushrooms, and get us a jug of mulled wine--plottie, as you call it--to put the recollection of the old Presbyterian's common sewer out of my head." So saying, up stairs marched the traveller to his own apartment, while Tyrrel, seizing upon a candle, was about to do the same. "Mr. Touchwood is in the blue room, Mrs. Dods; I suppose I may take possession of the yellow one?" "Suppose naething about the matter, Maister Francis Tirl, till ye tell me downright where ye have been a' this time, and whether ye hae been murdered or no?" "I think you may be pretty well satisfied of that, Mrs. Dods?" "Trot! and so I am in a sense; and yet it gars me grue to look upon ye, sae mony days and weeks it has been since I thought ye were rotten in the moulds. And now to see ye standing before me hale and feir, and crying for a bedroom like ither folk!" "One would almost suppose, my good friend," said Tyrrel, "that you were sorry at my having come alive again."