And now the child was really lovely, with the sweet carnation in her cheeks, and eyes dancing with the fear and pretence at alarm, and the delight of a stolen interview with me.

“Forth stepped the giant!  Fee! fo! fum!” said she; “took me by the bridle, and said, ‘Why haven’t you been to see my Aunt Lucy?’”

“I must not,” she said.

“And I say you must,” he answered.  “Do you know she is wearying to see you?”

Then I fancy how Viola’s tears would swim in her eyes as she said, “It’s not me; it’s mamma.”

And he answered, “Now, it is not you, but I, that is taking you to see her.”

“Should auld acquaintance be forgot!” was whistled out of the wood; and the whistle Viola knew quite well enough to disarm me when I came to the argument what was to become of her if she let such things be done with her; and she had quite enough of Dermot’s composition in her to delight in a “little bit of naughtiness that wasn’t too bad,” and when once she had resigned herself into the hands of her captor she enjoyed it, and twittered like a little bird; and I believe Harold really did it, just as he would have caught a rare bird or wild fawn, to please me.

“Then you were not frightened?” I said.

“Frightened?  No.  It was such fun!  Besides, we heard how he mastered the lion to save that poor little boy, and how he has looked after him ever since, and is going to bind him apprentice.  Oh, mind you show me his skin—­the lion’s, I mean.  Don’t be tiresome, Lucy.  And how he goes on after the children’s service with the dear little things.  I should think him the last person to be afraid of.”

“I wish your mother saw it so.”

Viola put on a comically wise look, and shook her head, as she said, “You didn’t go the right way to work.  If you had come back in the carriage, and consulted her, and said it was a mission—­yes, a mission—­for you to stand, with a lily in your hand, and reform your two bush-ranger nephews, and that you wanted her consent and advice, then she would have let you go back and be good aunt, and what-not.  Oh, I wish you had, Lucy!  That was the way Dermot managed about getting the lodge at Biston.  He says he could consult her into going out hunting.”

“For shame, Viola!  O fie!  O Vi!” said I, according to an old formula of reproof.

“Really, I wanted to tell you.  It might not be too late if you took to consulting her now; and I can’t bear being shut up from you.  Everything is grown so stupid.  When one goes to a garden-party there are nothing but Horsmans and Stympsons, and they all get into sets of themselves and each other, and now and then coalesce, especially the Stympsons, to pity poor Miss Alison, wonder at her not taking mamma’s advice, and say how horrid it is of her to live with her cousins.  I’ve corrected that so often that I take about with me the word ‘nephews’ written in large text, to confute them, and I’ve actually taught Cocky to say, ‘Nephews aren’t Cousins.’  Dermot is the only rational person in the neighbourhood.  I’m always trying to get him to tell me about you, but he says he can’t come up here much without giving a handle to the harpies.”