rly dressed," wrote the Colonel to Mr.
Mac-Morlan, "and let him accompany his young lady to Woodbourne!"

The dressing of Dominie Sampson was, however, easier said than done. For
it would hurt the pride of the Dominie to have clothes presented to him
as to a schoolboy. But Lucy Bertram soon settled the matter. The
Dominie, she said, would never notice the difference, if they put one
garment at a time into his sleeping room and took away the other. This
was what her father had always done when the wardrobe of his dependent
needed renewing. Nor had the Dominie ever showed the least consciousness
of the change.

So said, so done. A good tailor, having come and looked Mr. Sampson
over, readily agreed to provide him with two excellent suits, one black
and one raven grey, such as would fit the Dominie as well as a man of
such an out-of-the-way build could be fitted by merely human needles and
shears.

The Dominie, when completely equipped, made no remark upon the
change--further than that, in his opinion, the air of a seaport town
like Kippletringan seemed to be favourable to wearing-apparel.

It was the depth of winter when the Mannerings arrived at Woodbourne.
All were a little anxious. Even Dominie Sampson longed to be at his
books, and going repeatedly to the windows demanded, "Why tarry the
wheels of their chariot?" But when at last they came, Lucy and Julia
Bertram were soon friends, while the Dominie stood with uplifted hands,
exclaiming, "Prodeegious! Prodeegious!" as, one after another, the
thirty or forty cart-loads of books were deposited on the library floor
ready to his hand. His arms flapped like windmills, and the uncouth
scholar counted himself the happiest man on earth as he began to
arrange the great volumes on the shelves. Not that he got on very
quickly. For he wrote out the catalogue in his best running-hand. He put
the books on the shelves as carefully as if they had been old and
precious china. Yet in spite of the Dominie's zeal, his labours advanced
but slowly. Often he would chance to open a volume when halfway up the
ladder. Then, his eye falling upon some entrancing passage, he would
stand there transfixed, oblivious of the flight of time, till a
serving-maid pulled his skirts to tell him dinner was waiting. He would
then bolt his food in three-inch squares, and rush back to the library,
often with his dinner napkin still tied round his neck like a pinafore.
Thus, for the first time in his life,