The Jeffreys were not slow in appearing at Craigenputtock. Their 'big Carriage,' narrates the humorous host, 'climbed our rugged Hill-roads, landed the Three Guests--young Charlotte ("Sharlie"), with Pa and Ma--and the clever old Valet maid that waited on them; ... but I remember nothing so well as the consummate art with which my Dear One played the domestic field-marshal, and spread out our exiguous resources, without fuss or bustle; to cover everything with a coat of hospitality and even elegance and abundance. I have been in houses ten times, nay, a hundred times, as rich, where things went not so well. Though never bred to this, but brought up in opulent plenty by a mother that could bear no partnership in housekeeping, she, finding it become necessary, loyally applied herself to it, and soon surpassed in it all the women I have ever seen.'[8] Of Mrs Carlyle's frankness her husband gives this amusing glimpse: 'One day at dinner, I remember, Jeffrey admired the fritters or bits of pancake he was eating, and she let him know, not without some vestige of shock to him, that she had made them. "What, you! twirl up the frying-pan, and catch them in the air?" Even so, my high friend, and you may turn it over in your mind!' When the Jeffreys were leaving, 'I remarked,' says Carlyle, that they 'carried off our little temporary paradise; ... to which bit of pathos Jeffrey answered by a friendly little sniff of quasi-mockery or laughter through the nose, and rolled prosperously away.'