"I'm so glad that old Vike takes to you, Frank," said Duncan. "It isn't everybody he likes."
"Of course," said Frank, "'old' is merely a term of endearment, as father would say."
"That's it. He is only a year and six months old, but already there is nothing scarcely that he does not know, in country life, I mean, though I suppose he will be rather strange in town for a time."
"Sure to be. But here comes James. Luncheon served, James, eh?"
"Luncheon all ready, Master Frank."
They found the Colonel walking up and down the well-lighted hall smoking a cigarette. He was really a most inveterate smoker. He smoked before breakfast, after breakfast, all the forenoon, and all day long. Rolled his own cigarettes, too, so that his fore and middle fingers were indelibly stained yellow with the tobacco.
"Horrid habit!" he always told boys, "but I've become a slave to it. Don't you ever smoke."
Though some years over sixty, Trelawney was as straight as a telephone pole, handsome, and soldierly in face and bearing. The only thing that detracted from his facial appearance was a slight degree of bagginess betwixt the lower eyelids and the cheek bones. This was brought on, his doctor had told him often and often, by weakness of the heart caused by tobacco and wine. But Trelawney would not punish himself by leaving either off.
The boys took to Mrs. Trelawney from the very first. She must have been fully twenty years younger than the Colonel, and had a sweet, even beautiful, face, and was altogether winning.
Well, that was a luncheon of what might be called elegant kickshaws, artistically cooked and served, but eminently unsatisfactory from a Scotch point of view.