If you happened by mischance to have accepted an appointment to
serve and represent a lunatic, and you discovered that you had done so,
there were only two things to do, either to hold on, or "to chuck it."
But George Tyson, whose father and grandfather had been small land agents
before him, of the silent, honest, tenacious Cumbria sort, belonged to
a stock which had never resigned anything, till at least the next step
was clear; and the young man had no intention whatever of "chucking it."
But to hold on certainly meant patience, and as few words as might be.
So he only stopped to give one more anxious look round the table to see
that no scratches had befallen it in the process of unpacking, gave
orders to Mrs. Dixon to light yet another fire in the room, which struck
exceedingly chill, and then left them for a final tour round the
ground-floor, heaping on coals everywhere with a generous hand. On this
point alone--the point of warmth--had Mr. Melrose's letters shown a
disposition to part with money, in ordinary domestic way. "The odiousness
of your English climate is only matched by the absurdity of your English
grates," he had written, urbanely, from Paris. "Get the house up to
sixty, if you can. And get a man over from Carlisle to put in a furnace.
I can see him the day after we arrive. My wife is Italian, and shivers
already at the thought of Cumbria."
Sixty indeed! In this dank rain from the northeast, and on this high
ground, not a passage in the house could be got above forty-six; and the
sitting-rooms were alternately stifling and vaultlike.
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