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.
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