ephews
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."

I had scarcely said how good it was in Dermot, when he sauntered in.
"There you are, Vi; I'm come to your rescue, you know," he said, in his
lazy way, and disposed himself on the bear-skin as we sat on the sofa.
I tried again to utter a protest. "Oh Dermot, it was all your doing."

"That's rather too bad. As if I could control your domestic
lion-tamer."

"You abetted him. You could have prevented him."

"Such being your wish."

"I am thinking of your mother."

"Eh, Viola, is the meeting worth the reckoning?"

"You should not teach her your own bad ways," said I, resisting her
embrace.

"Come, we had better be off, Dermot," she said, pouting; "we did not
come here to be scolded."

"I thought you did not come of your own free will at all," I said, and
then I found I had hurt her, and I had to explain that it was the
disobedience that troubled me; whereupon they both argued seriously
that people were not bound to submit to a cruel and unreasonable
prejudice, which had set the country in arms against us. "Monstrous,"
Dermot said, "that two fellows should suffer for their fathers' sins,
and such fellows, and you too for not being unnatural to your own flesh
and blood."

"But that does not make it right for Viola to disobey her mother."

"And how is it to be, Lucy?" asked Viola. "Are we always to go on in
this dreadful way?"

By this time Eustace could no longer be withheld from paying his
respects to the lady guest, and Harold and Dora came with him, bringing
the kangaroo, for which Viola had entreated; and she also made him
fetch the lion-skin, which had been dressed and lined and made into a
beautiful carriage-rug; and to Dora she owed the exhibition of the
great scar across Harold's left palm, which, though now no
inconvenience, he would carry through life. It was but for a moment,
for as soon as he perceived that Dora meant anything more than her
usual play with his fingers, he coloured and thrust his hand into his
pocket.

We all walked through the grounds with Viola, and when we parted she
hung about my neck and assured me that now she had seen me she should
not grieve half so much, and, let mamma say what she would, she could
not be sorry; and I had no time to fight over the battle o