Page:Guy Mannering Vol 2.djvu/273

Rh as found its way from the lane through the window opposite. At present the interior of the kitchen was visible by its own huge fires—a sort of Pandemonium, where men and women, half undressed, were busied in baking, broiling, roasting oysters, and preparing devils on the gridiron; the mistress of the place, with her shoes slip-shod, and her hair straggling like that of Mægera from under a round-eared cap, toiling, scolding, receiving orders, giving them, and obeying them all at once, seemed the mistress enchantress of that gloomy and fiery region.

Loud and repeated bursts of laughter from different quarters of the house proved that her labours were acceptable, and not unrewarded by a generous public. With some difficulty a waiter was prevailed upon to show Colonel Mannering and Dinmont the room where their friend, learned in the law, held his hebdomadal carousals. The scene which it exhibited,