d seal-skin, and of silvery lustre, tapered down
into long white boots, which enclosed the neatest of ankles and the
daintiest of feet. A little jacket of Scotch plaid, with a collar and
border of fur, covered the body to the waist, while from beneath the
collar peeped up a pure white cambric handkerchief, covering the throat;
and heavy masses of glossy black hair were intertwined with ribbons of
gay red. Marvellous Sophy! Dusky daughter of a Danish father and a
native mother. From her mother she had her rich brunette complexion and
raven hair; from her father, Saxon features, and light blue Saxon eyes.

If the housekeeper attracted my attention, so did the dishes which she
set before me. Smoked salmon of exquisite delicacy, reindeer sausages,
reindeer tongues nicely dried and thinly sliced, and fine fresh Danish
bread, made up a style of "pot-luck" calculated to cause a hungry man
from the high seas and sailors' "prog" to wish for the same style of
luck for the remainder of his days. But when all this came to be washed
down with the contents of sundry bottles with which Sophy dotted the
clean white cloth, the "luck" was perfect, and there was nothing further
to desire.

"Ah! here we are," said my entertainer. "Sophy wishes to make amends for
the dryness of her fare. This is a choice Margaux, and I can recommend
it. But, Sophy, here, you haven't warmed this quite enough. Ah! my dear
sir, you experience the trouble of a Greenland life. One can never get
his wines properly tempered."

One cannot get his wines properly tempered!--and this is the trouble of
a Greenland life!! "Surely," thought I, "one might find something worse
than this."

"Here," picking up the next bottle, "we have some Johannisberg, very
fine as I can assure you; but I have little fancy even for the best of
these Rhenish wines. Too much like a pretty woman without soul. They
never warm the imagination. There's something better to build upon there
close beside your elbow. Since the claret's forbidden us for the
present, I'll drink you welcome in that rich Madeira. Why, do you know,
sir," rattled on the Doctor, as I passed the bottle, seemingly rejoiced
in his very heart at having some one to talk to,--"do you know, sir,
that I have kept that by me here these ten years past? My good old
father sent it to me as a mark of special favor. Why, sir, it has a
pedigree as long as one of Locksley's cloth-yard shafts. But the
pedigree will keep: let's prove it