"Shall we have the candles," he suggested, "and shut the weather out?"
She turned irritably on the sofa, without replying. "I'll promise to go
away the first thing in the morning!" he went on. "Do try and take it
easy--and don't be angry with me. Come! come! you wouldn't turn a dog
out, Miss Silvester, on such a night as this!"

He was irresistible. The most sensitive woman breathing could not
have accused him of failing toward her in any single essential of
consideration and respect. He wanted tact, poor fellow--but who could
expect him to have learned that always superficial (and sometimes
dangerous) accomplishment, in the life he had led at sea? At the sight
of his honest, pleading face, Anne recovered possession of her gentler
and sweeter self. She made her excuses for her irritability with a grace
that enchanted him. "We'll have a pleasant evening of it yet!" cried
Arnold, in his hearty way--and rang the bell.

The bell was hung outside the door of that Patmos in the
wilderness--otherwise known as the head-waiter's pantry. Mr. Bishopriggs
(employing his brief leisure in the seclusion of his own apartment) had
just mixed a glass of the hot and comforting liquor called "toddy" in
the language of North Britain, and was just lifting it to his lips, when
the summons from Arnold invited him to leave his grog.

"Haud yer screechin' tongue!" cried Mr. Bishopriggs, addressing the
bell through the door. "Ye're waur than a woman when ye aince begin!"

The bell--like the woman--went on again. Mr. Bishopriggs, equally
pertinacious, went on with his toddy.