On the whole, her presence was very good for us, if only by infusing the element of age.  She liked to potter about in the morning, attending to her birds and bantams, and talking to the gardening men, weeding women, and all the people in the adjacent hamlet; and, afterwards, the fireside, with her knitting and a newspaper, sufficed her.  Not the daily papers—­they were far too much for her; but the weekly paper from her own town, which lasted her till a new one came, as she spelled it through, and communicated the facts and facetiae as she thought them suited to our capacity.  She was a better walker than I, and would seldom come out in the carriage, for she always caught cold when she did so.  A long nap after dinner ended in her resuming her knitting quite contentedly in silence.  She wanted no more, though she was pleased if any one said a few kindly words to her.  Nothing could be more inoffensive, and she gave us a centre and something needing consideration.  I feared Dora might be saucy to her, but perhaps motherliness was what the wild child needed, for she drew towards her, and was softened, and even submitted to learn to knit, for the sake of the mighty labour of making a pair of socks for Harold.

The respectability her presence gave in our pew, and by our hearth, was a great comfort to our friends of all degrees.  She was a very pretty old lady, with dark eyes, cheeks still rosy, lovely loose waves of short snowy curls, and a neat, active little figure, which looked well in the good black silks in which I contrived to invest her.

Good old woman, she thought us all shockingly full of worldliness, little guessing how much gaiety was due to her meek presence among us.  We even gave dinner-parties in state, and what Richardson and I underwent from Eustace in preparation, no tongue can tell, nor Eustace’s complacence in handing down Lady Diana!

The embargo on intercourse with Arked House was over before Viola was taken to London to be introduced.  Eustace wanted much to follow them, be at the levee, and spend the season in town.  Had he not been presented at Government House, and was it not due to the Queen?  Dora more practically offered to follow the example of the Siberian exile, and lay a petition for Prometesky’s release at her Majesty’s feet, but Harold uttered his ponderous “No” alike to both, proving, in his capacity as agent, that Eustace had nothing like the amount this year which could enable him to spend two or three months even as a single man in London society.  The requisite amount, which he had ascertained, was startling, even had Eustace been likely to be frugal; nor could this year’s income justify it, in spite of Boola Boola.  The expense of coming into the estate, together with all the repairs and improvements, had been such that the Australian property had been needed to supplement the new.  Eustace was very angry and disappointed, and grumbled vehemently.  It was all Harry’s fault for making him spend hundreds on his own maggots, that nobody wanted and nobody cared about, and would be the ruin of him.  Poor Bullock would have raised the sum fast enough, and thought nothing of it.