At length, one day, hearing her voice in the shop, and having peeped
through a hole in the floor to see that no stranger was present,
he invited her to go up, and lifted the trapdoor.
"Come, come," he said hurriedly, when her head appeared and came
no farther.
He stood holding the trapdoor, eager to close it again as soon as
she should step clear of it, and surprise was retarding her ascent.
Before hearing his mind, the carpenter had already made for him,
by way of bedstead, a simple frame of wood, crossed with laths in
the form of lattice work: this the laird had taken and set up on
its side, opposite the window, about two feet from it, so that, with
abundant passage for air, it served as a screen. Fixing it firmly
to the floor, he had placed on the top of it a large pot of the
favourite cottage plant there called Humility, and trained its long
pendent runners over it. On the floor between it and the window, he
had ranged a row of flower pots--one of them with an ivy plant,
which also he had begun to train against the trellis; and already
the humility and the ivy had begun to intermingle.
At one side of the room, where the sloping roof met the floor, was
his bed of fresh pine shavings, amongst which, their resinous half
aromatic odour apparently not sweet enough to content him, he had
scattered a quantity of dried rose leaves. A thick tartan plaid,
for sole covering, lay upon the heap.
"I wad hae likit hay better," he said, pointing to this lair rather
than couch, "but it's some ill to get, an' the spales they 're at
han', an' they smell unco clean.
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