"Not since breakfast."
"It is a marvel you are able to speak! You must try to eat some oat-cake."
"I wish I hadn't taken that last slice of deer-ham!" said Alister, ruefully.
"I will eat if I can," said Mercy.
They brought her a cup of tea and some pieces of oat-cake; then, having lighted her a candle, they left her, and closed the door.
She sipped her tea, managed to eat a little of the dry but wholesome food, and found herself capable of getting up. It was the strangest bedroom! she thought. Everything was cut out of the live rock. The dressing-table might have been a sarcophagus! She kneeled by the bedside, and tried to thank God. Then she opened the door. The chief rose at the sound of it.
"I'm sorry," he said, "that we have no woman to wait on you."
"I want nothing, thank you!" answered Mercy, feeling very weak and ready to cry, but restraining her tears. "What a curious house this is!"
"It is a sort of doll's house my brother and I have been at work upon for nearly fifteen years. We meant, when summer was come, to ask you all to spend a day with us up here."
"When first we went to work on it," said Ian, "we used to tell each other tales in which it bore a large share, and Alister's were generally about a lost princess taking refuge in it!"