Going through
one of the lower passages, he heard voices, and turned aside to
examine. The management was not strict, and in case of a fire
the mill was not insured: like Knowles's carelessness.
It was Lois and her father,--Joe Yare being feeder that night.
They were in one of the great furnace-rooms in the cellar,--a
very comfortable place that stormy night. Two or three doors of
the wide brick ovens were open, and the fire threw a ruddy glow
over the stone floor, and shimmered into the dark recesses of the
shadows, very home-like after the rain and mud without. Lois
seemed to think so, at any rate, for she had made a table of a
store-box, put a white cloth on it, and was busy getting up a
regular supper for her father,--down on her knees before the red
coals, turning something on an iron plate, while some slices of
ham sent up a cloud of juicy, hungry smell.
The old stoker had just finished slaking the out-fires, and was
putting some blue plates on the table, gravely straightening
them. He had grown old, as Polston said,--Holmes saw, stooped
much, with a low, hacking cough; his coarse clothes were
curiously clean: that was to please Lois, of course. She put the
ham on the table, and some bubbling coffee, and then, from a
hickory board in front of the fire, took off, with a jerk, brown,
flaky slices of Virginia johnny-cake.
"Ther' yoh are, father, hot 'n' hot," with her face on
fire,--"ther'--yoh--are,--coaxin' to be eatin'.--Why, Mr.
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