"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?" "We did not bring her, because she would not come," replied Emmie. "I suppose that in an old haunted house, country cooks and country footmen are necessary evils, and must be endured," said Vibert, attempting to look philosophic. "But I hope that you, as mistress of the establishment, have spoken pretty sharply to Hannah. I hope that you have given her a fright." "Hannah is a good deal more likely to give me one," answered the smiling Emmie. "I think of making over to you, Vibert, the office of scolding the cook." "I should find that a more formidable task than that of facing all the ghosts of Myst Court," was the merry lad's playful reply. CHAPTER XV. THE FIRST VISIT.