The good woman was just going to make her tea.  Viola insisted on showing the use of her cozy, and making everybody stay to nurse’s impromptu kettledrum, and herself put in the pinches of tea.  Dermot chaffed all and sundry; Viola bustled about; Harold sat on the dresser, with his blue eyes gleaming in the firelight with silent amusement and perfect satisfaction, the cat sitting on his shoulder; and nurse, who was firmly persuaded that he had rescued her dear Master Dermot from the fangs of the lion, was delighted to do her best for his entertainment.  Viola insisted on displaying all the curiosities—­the puzzle-cup that could not be used, the horrid frog that sprang to your lips in the tankard, the rolling-pin covered with sentimental poetry, and her extraordinary French pictures on the walls.  Dermot kept us full of merriment, and we laughed on till the sound of the dressing-bell sent us racing up to the castle in joyous guilt.  That kettledrum at the lodge is one of the brightest spots in my memory.

We were very merry all the evening in a suppressed way over the piano, Viola, Dermot, and I singing, Harold looking on, and Eustace being left a willing victim to the good counsel lavished by my lord and my lady, who advised him nearly out of his senses and into their own best graces.

But we had not yet done with the amenities of the Stympsons.  The morning’s post brought letters to Lady Diana and Lord Erymanth, which were swallowed by the lady with only a flush on her brow, but which provoked from the gentleman a sharp interjection.

“Scandalous, libellous hags!”

“The rara Avis?” inquired Dermot.

And in spite of Lady Diana’s warning, “Not now,” Lord Erymanth declared, “Avice, yes!  A bird whose quills are quills of iron dipped in venom, and her beak a brazen one, distilling gall on all around.  I shall inform her that she has made herself liable to an action for libel.  A very fit lesson to her.”

“What steps shall I take, my lord?” said Eustace, with much importance.  “I shall be most happy to be guided by you.”

“It is not you,” said Lord Erymanth.

“Oh! if it is only he, it does not signify so much.”

“Certainly not,” observed Dermot.  “What sinks some floats others.”

Lady Diana here succeeded in hushing up the subject, Harold having said nothing all the time; but, after we broke up from breakfast, I had a private view of Lady Diana’s letter, which was spiteful beyond description as far as we were concerned; making all manner of accusations on the authority of the Australian relations; the old stories exaggerated into horrible blackness, besides others for which I could by no means account.  Gambling among the gold-diggers, horrid frays in Victoria, and even cattle-stealing, were so impossible in a man who had always been a rich sheep farmer, that I laughed; yet they were told by the cousins with strange circumstantiality.