 conversation, until, declining any further circulation of
their glass, her guests requested her permission to retire to their apartments.
    The Marquis occupied the chamber of dais, which, in every house above the
rank of a mere cottage, was kept sacred for such high occasions as the present.
The modern finishing with plaster was then unknown, and tapestry was confined to
the houses of the nobility and superior gentry. The cooper, therefore, who was a
man of some vanity, as well as some wealth, had imitated the fashion observed by
the inferior landholders and clergy, who usually ornamented their state
apartments with hangings of a sort of stamped leather, manufactured in the
Netherlands, garnished with trees and animals executed in copper foil, and with
many a pithy sentence of morality, which, although couched in Low Dutch, were
perhaps as much attended to in practice as if written in broad Scotch. The whole
had somewhat of a gloomy aspect; but the fire, composed of old pitch-barrel
staves, blazed merrily up the chimney; the bed was decorated with linen of most
fresh and dazzling whiteness, which had never before been used, and might,
perhaps, have never been used at all, but for this high occasion. On the
toilette beside stood an old-fashioned mirror, in a filigree frame, part of the
dispersed finery of the neighbouring castle. It was flanked by a long-necked
bottle of Florence wine, by which stood a glass nearly as tall, resembling in
shape that which Teniers usually places in the hands of his own portrait, when
he paints himself as mingling in the revels of a country village. To
counterbalance those foreign sentinels, there mounted guard on the other side of
the mirror two stout warders of Scottish lineage; a jug, namely, of double ale,
which held a Scotch pint, and a quegh, or bicker, of ivory and ebony, hooped
with silver, the work of John Girder's own hands and the pride of his heart.
Besides these preparations against thirst, there was a goodly diet-loaf, or
sweet-cake; so that, with such auxiliaries, the apartment seemed victualled
against a siege of two or three days.
    It only remains to say, that the Marquis's valet was in attendance,
displaying his master's brocaded night-gown, and richly embroidered velvet cap,
lined and faced with Brussels lace, upon a hugh leathern easy chair, wheeled
round so as to have the full advantage of the comfortable fire which we have
already mentioned. We, therefore, commit that eminent person to his night'
