choose such a scene for social indulgence. Besides the miserable
entrance, the house itself seemed paltry and half ruinous. The
passage in which they stood had a window to the close, which
admitted a little light during the daytime, and a villainous
compound of smells at all times, but more especially towards
evening. Corresponding to this window was a borrowed light on the
other side of the passage, looking into the kitchen, which had no
direct communication with the free air, but received in the
daytime, at second hand, such straggling and obscure light as
found its way from the lane through the window opposite. At
present the interior of the kitchen was visible by its own huge
fires--a sort of Pandemonium, where men and women, half undressed,
were busied in baking, broiling, roasting oysters, and preparing
devils on the gridiron; the mistress of the place, with her shoes
slipshod, and her hair straggling like that of Megaera from under
a round-eared cap, toiling, scolding, receiving orders, giving
them, and obeying them all at once, seemed the presiding
enchantress of that gloomy and fiery region.

Loud and repeated bursts of laughter from different quarters of
the house proved that her labours were acceptable, and not
unrewarded by a generous public. With some difficulty a waiter was
prevailed upon to show Colonel Mannering and Dinmont the room
where their friend learned in the law held his hebdomadal
carousals. The scene which it exhibited, and particularly the
attitude of the counsellor himself, the principal figure therein,
struck his two clients with amazement.

Mr. Pleydell was a lively, sharp-looking gentleman, with a
professional shrewdness in his eye, and, generally speaking, a