“Oh, if the colonel dare to hint that my brother is the pleasantest fellow that he has met with, I’ll resent the impertinence, I promise you,” laughed Vibert.
Emmie foresaw, with uneasiness, more angry sparring between her two brothers, and, to turn the current of conversation, asked Vibert what he thought of the Blairs.
“Oh, our tutor is a learned professor, who has pored over books, and puzzled over problems, till he has grown into the shape of a note of interrogation,” replied Vibert lightly. “As for his wife, she’s a homely body, as clever men’s wives usually are; Mrs. Blair looks like a housekeeper, but has not the merit of being a good one.”
Bruce, whom the conversation did not greatly interest, had taken up a book.
“And her family?” inquired Emmie; “I suppose that you have made their acquaintance.”
“We were all gathered together at early dinner, if one could call that a dinner at which there was nothing eatable,” said the fastidious Vibert. “There was old Blair at one end of the table, hacking at a shoulder of mutton, and talking, as he did so, to Bruce about Sophocles and Euripides. There was Mrs. Blair at the other end, ladling out the potatoes. Bruce and I sat on one side, and three demure little chaps in pinafores on the other, like degrees of comparison, small, smaller, and smallest; dull, duller, and dullest. The children were so terribly well-behaved, that they never asked for anything (not that there was much to ask for), they never spoke a word, nor lifted their eyes from their plates, but wielded with propriety their forks and spoons; I think that only the eldest of the three was trusted with a knife. The little fellows’ looks seemed to say, ‘It is a matter of business, and not of play, to eat shoulder of mutton and boiled rice pudding, and drink water out of horn mugs.’ The whole affair had such a nursery look about it, that I half expected to be provided with a pinafore, instead of a dinner napkin.”
“You incorrigible boy!” laughed Emmie; “I think that the three degrees of comparison will become merry, merrier, and merriest in your company soon.”
“They will have precious little of it, I can tell you that,” said Vibert; “one such meal is enough for me. To say nothing of its intolerable dulness, the wine of Blair’s table is insufferably bad, the mere washing out of casks, cheap trash!”—the lad distorted his handsome features into an expression of strong disgust. “Oh, you did not mind it, Bruce,” continued Vibert, as his brother glanced up from his book; “you are a water-drinker and no judge on the subject, but I know what is what, and cheap wine of all things I detest. It ruins the constitution. I shall try if I cannot get something eatable and drinkable in the town; I hear that there is a capital table d’hôte at the White Hart.”
“You are aware that the arrangement for our having luncheon at our tutor’s being concluded, your taking the meal elsewhere must involve double expense,” observed Bruce.
“Can’t help that,” said the youthful epicurean, shrugging his shoulders; “I can’t work on coarse mutton and plain rice pudding, served up on plates of the old willow-pattern; specially as I seem likely to be starved at Myst Court, if we are to have no cook but Hannah. I am certain,” continued Vibert, his bright eyes sparkling with fun as he turned to his sister—“I am certain that yesterday’s boiled rabbits were my great-aunt’s cats in disguise, and that the soup—faugh!—was simply the water in which they had been boiled! Why did we not bring our old cook to Myst Court?”