“It is even more delightful than a gallop on Zephyr,” she told her sister, who stood on the bank with a cluster of gay company, watching the skaters. “I doubt not that; since there is even more danger of getting your neck broken upon runaway skates than on a runaway horse,” answered Hyacinth. After an hour on the lake, in which Denzil had distinguished himself by his mastery of the new exercise, being always at hand to support his mistress at the slightest indication of peril, she consented to the removal of her skates, at Papillon’s earnest entreaty, who wanted her aunt to walk with her before dinner. After dinner there would be the swift-coming December twilight, and Christmas games, snap-dragon and the like, which Papillon, although a little fine lady, reproducing all her mother’s likes and dislikes in miniature, could not, as a human child, altogether disregard. “I don’t care about such nonsense as Georgie does,” she told her aunt, with condescending reference to her brother; “but I like to see the others amused. Those village children are such funny little savages. They stick their fingers in their mouths and grin at me, and call me ‘Your annar,’ or ‘Your worship,’ and say ‘Anan’ to everything. They are like Audrey in the play you read to me.” Denzil was in attendance upon aunt and niece. “If you want to come with us, you must invent a pretty walk, Sir Denzil,” said Papillon. “I am tired of long lanes and ploughed fields.” “I know of one of the pleasantest rambles in the shire—across the woods to the Grange. And we can rest there for half an hour, if Mrs. Angela will allow us, and take a light refreshment.” “Dear Sir Denzil, that is the very thing,” answered Papillon, breathlessly. “I am dying of hunger. And I don’t want to go back to the Abbey. Will there be any cakes or mince pies at the Grange?” “Cakes in plenty, but I fear there will be no mince pies. My mother does not love Christmas dainties.” Henriette wanted to know why. She was always wanting the reason of things. A bright inquiring little mind, perpetually on the alert for novelty; an imitative brain like a monkey’s; hands and feet that know not rest; and there you have the Honourable Henrietta Maria Revel, _alias_ Papillon. They crossed the river, Angela and Denzil each taking an oar, while Papillon pretended to steer, a process which she effected chiefly by screaming. “Another lump of ice!” she shrieked. “We shall be swamped. I believe the river will be frozen before Twelfth Night, and we shall be able to dance upon it. We must have bonfires and roast an ox for the poor people. Mrs. Hubbuck told me they roasted an ox the year King Charles was beheaded. Horrid brutes—to think that they could eat at such a time! If they had been sorry they could not have relished roast beef.”