As all was silence, she ventured to open one door--it was the old
Laird's dog-kennel, now deserted, unless when occupied, as one or two
tubs seemed to testify, as a washing-house. She tried another--it was the
rootless shed where the hawks had been once kept, as appeared from a
perch or two not yet completely rotten, and a lure and jesses which were
mouldering on the wall. A third door led to the coal-house, which was
well stocked. To keep a very good fire was one of the few points of
domestic management in which Dumbiedikes was positively active; in all
other matters of domestic economy he was completely passive, and at the
mercy of his housekeeper--the same buxom dame whom his father had long
since bequeathed to his charge, and who, if fame did her no injustice,
had feathered her nest pretty well at his expense.
Jeanie went on opening doors, like the second Calender wanting an eye, in
the castle of the hundred obliging damsels, until, like the said prince
errant, she came to a stable. The Highland Pegasus, Rory Bean, to which
belonged the single entire stall, was her old acquaintance, whom she had
seen grazing on the baulk, as she failed not to recognise by the
well-known ancient riding furniture and demi-pique saddle, which half
hung on the walls, half trailed on the litter.
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