“Certainly: he will be delighted to attend your ladyship.—Here are the keys of the cabinets in the drawing-room, Cosmo. Her ladyship may like to look at some of their contents.”
“I hardly know enough about them,” returned Cosmo. “Won’t you come yourself, father, and show them to us?”
It was the first time the boy used the appellation.
“If they are not worth looking at in themselves, the facts about them cannot be of much consequence, my boy,” answered the laird.
He was unwilling to leave Lord Mergwain. Lady Joan and Cosmo went without him.
“Perhaps we may follow you by and by,” said the laird.
“Is the place very old, Cosmo?” asked Lady Joan on their way.
“Nobody knows how old the oldest part of it is,” answered Cosmo, “though dates are assigned to the most of what you will see to-day. But you must ask my father; I do not know much of the history of it. I know the place itself, though, as well as he does. I fancy I know nearly every visible stone of it.”
“You are very fond of it, then?”
“There never could be any place like it to me, my lady. I know it is not very beautiful, but I love it none the less for that. I sometimes think I love it the more for its ruggedness—ugliness, if you please to call it so. If my mother had not been beautiful, I should love her all the same.”—“and think there wasn’t anybody like her,” he was going to add, but checked himself, remembering that of course there was not.