Remember, I said this, and let no one ever say the
contrary."
And in all the houses they visited--farm, cottage, or bothie--
every body noticed how exceedingly happy the earl looked, how cheerfully
he spoke, and how full of interest he was in every thing around him.
"His lordship may live to be an auld man yet," said some one to Malcolm,
and Malcolm indignantly repudiated the possibility of any thing else.
The minister was left a little lonely during this week of Lord
Cairnforth's coming home, but he did not seem to feel it. He felt
nothing very much now except pleasure in the sunshine and the fire, in
looking at the outside of his books, now rarely opened, and in watching
the bright faces around him. He was made to understand what a grand
festival was to be held at Cairnforth, and the earl took especial pains
to arrange that the feeble octogenarian should be brought to the Castle
without fatigue, and enabled to appear both at the tenants' feast in the
kitchen, and the more formal banquet of friends and neighbors in the
hall--the grand old dining-room--which was arranged exactly as it
had been on the earl's coming of age.
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