Lady Joan Scudamore thought it very odd that the youth should be on such familiar terms with the daughter of one of his father’s tenants--out alone with her in the heart of a hideous storm! No doubt the girl looked up to him, but apparently from the same level, as one sharing in the pride of the family! Should she take her advice, and seek his? or should she press on for Howglen? There was, alas! no counsel to be had from her father just at present: if she woke him, he would but mutter something not so much unlike an oath as it ought to be, and go to sleep again! “We want very much to reach Howglen--I think that is what you call the place,” she said. “You can’t get there to-night, I’m afraid,” returned Cosmo. “The road is, as you see, no road at all. The horses would do better if you took their shoes off, I think--only then, if they came on a bit of frozen dub, it might knock their hoofs to pieces in such a frost.” The lady glanced round at her sleeping companion with a look expressive of no small perplexity. “My father will make you welcome, my lady,” continued Cosmo, “if you will come with us. We can give you only what English people must think poor fare, for we’re not--” She interrupted him. “I should be glad to sit anywhere all night, where there was a fire. I am nearly frozen.” “We can do a little better for you than that, though not so well as we should like. Perhaps, as we can’t make any show, we are the more likely to do our best for your comfort.” Their pinched circumstances had at one time and another given rise to conversation in which the laird and his son sought together to sound the abysses of hospitality: the old-fashioned sententiousness of the boy had in it nothing of the prig. “You are very kind. I will promise to be comfortable,” said the lady. She began to be a trifle interested in this odd specimen of the Scotch calf. “Welcome then to Glenwarlock!” said Cosmo. “Come, Aggie; tak ane o’ them by the heid: they’re gaein’ wi’ ’s.--We must turn the horses’ heads, my lady. I fear they won’t like to face the wind they’ve only had their backs to yet. I can’t make out whether your driver is half dead or half drunk or more than half frozen; but Aggie and I will take care of them, and if he tumble off, nobody will be the worse.” “What a terrible country!” said the lady to herself. “The coachmen get drunk! the boys are prigs! there is no distinction between the owners of the soil and the tenants who farm it! and it snows from morning to night, and from one week’s end to another!”