THE CANADIAN'S COLD BATH WARMS UP THE COLONEL.
Deerhurst was a capital house to spend a Christmas in. It was the house of an English gentleman, with even the dens called bachelors' rooms comfortable and luxurious to the last extent: a first-rate stud, a capital billiard table, a good sporting country, pretty girls to amuse one with when tired of the pink, the best Chablis and Château Margaux to be had anywhere, and a host who would have liked a hundred people at his dinner-table the whole year round. The snow, confound it! prevented our taking the hounds out for the first few days; but we were not bored as one might have expected, and our misery was the girls' delight, who were fervently hoping that the ice might come thick enough for them to skate. Cecil was invaluable in a country-house; her resources were as unlimited as Houdin's inexhaustible bottle. She played in French vaudevilles and Sheridan Knowles's comedies, acted charades, planned tableaux vivants, sang gay wild chansons peculiar to herself, that made the Screechington bravuras and themes more insupportable than ever; and, what was more, managed to infuse into everybody else some of her own energy and spirit. She made every one do as she liked; but she tyrannised over us so charmingly that we never chafed at the bit; and to the other girls she was so good-natured in giving them the rôles they liked, in praising, and in aiding them, that it was difficult for feminine malice, though its limits are boundless, to find fault with her. Vivian, though he did not relax his criticism of her, was agreeable to her, as he had been in Canada, and as he is always to women when he is not too lazy. He consented to stand for Rienzi in a tableau, though he hates doing all those things, and played in the Proverbs with such a flashing fire of wit in answer to Cecil that we told him he beat Mathews.
"I'm inspired," he said, with a laughing bend of his head to Cecil, when somebody complimented him.
She gave an impatient movement—she was accustomed to have such things whispered in earnest, not in jest. She laughed, however. "Are you inspired, then, to take Huon's part? All the characters are cast but that."
"I'm afraid I can't play well enough."
"Nonsense. You cannot think that. Say you would rather not at once."
Vivian stroked his mustaches thoughtfully. "Well, you see, it bores me rather; and I'm not Christian enough to suffer ennui cheerfully to please other people."
"Very well, then, I will give the part to Sir Horace," said Cecil, looking through the window at the church spire, covered with the confounded snow.
Vivian stroked away at his mustaches rather fiercely this time. "Cos! he'll ruin the play. Dress him up as a lord in waiting, he'll be a dainty lay figure, but for anything more he's not as fit as this setter! Fancy that essenced, fair-haired young idiot taking Huon—his lisp would be so effective!"
She looked up in his face with one of her mischievous, dangerous smiles, and put up her hands in an attitude of petition. "He must have the part if you won't. Be good, and don't spoil the play. I have set my mind on its being perfect, and—I will have such a dress as the Countess if you will only do as I tell you."