416 A FIRESIDE INTERIOR. 



fellow-servant, our uncle's butler, valet, amanuensis, and libra- 

 rian, eke our writing-master (Lucy's and mine), the angular, 

 bony, spindle-shanked, high-shouldered, hard-featured, hard- 

 minded, if not exactly hard-hearted, Caleb Caligraph, who could 

 never from his cradle have looked young, and could never to 

 his grave have appeared absolutely old. 



Now, last of our pictures, comes an interior, a scene by fire- 

 light within the cottage parsonage depicted in our first. Here 

 is the large low kitchen, opening out of the large low hall, with 

 its open rafters apt for the double duty of supporting superin- 

 cumbent chambers and dependent hams ; its dresser of like 

 solidity, only of more fair complexion, and displaying on its 

 shelves a bright array of blue-edged platters and polished 

 pewters, both shining in cold disdainful rivalry against the ruddy 

 coppers underneath ; the whole illuminated by the glare of a 

 Vesuvian mountain of wood-crowned coal, glowing at bottom, 

 blazing at top, crackling and spluttering, rejoicing, as it would 

 seem, within its ample range, that its culinary labours, for the 

 day, are ended. 



Our interior is not entirely a picture of still life. Seated, 

 one on a low stool, the other on a wooden chair beside the fire, 

 are two children a little white-frocked girl of perhaps nine or 

 ten, fair, and looking fragile as a flower, and a boy some three 

 years older, and by his garb seeming, like herself, a visitor only 

 to the kitchen. The girl is as at Christmas Christmas fifty 

 years ago appeared our little cousin Lucy. 



At the period when the above scenes and persons were in- 

 vested with reality and life, the 23rd of December used to be a 

 red-letter day in our then short calendar. It was that on which 

 our uncle was accustomed to entertain a party of old college 

 friends ; and we and our cousin, our company superfluous in 

 the parlour, were permitted to bestow it in the kitchen, there to 

 take tea with Dolly Dove and Caleb. 



In the kitchen, then, behold us, by firelight, Lucy and I, 

 and a large white cat. 



