c
handling of their guests, especially of this one, whom Nesta would
attack, and Nataly would not defend.

They were alive at a signal to protect the others. Miss Priscilla Graves,
an eater of meat, was ridiculous in her ant'alcoholic exclusiveness and
scorn: Mr. Pempton, a drinker of wine, would laud extravagantly the more
transparent purity of vegetarianism. Dr. Peter Yatt jeered at globules:
Dr. John Cormyn mourned over human creatures treated as cattle by big
doses. The Rev. Septimus Barmby satisfactorily smoked: Mr. Peridon traced
mortal evil to that act. Dr. Schlesien had his German views, Colney
Durance his ironic, Fenellan his fanciful and free-lance. And here was an
optimist, there a pessimist; and the rank Radical, the rigid
Conservative, were not wanting. All of them were pointedly opposed,
extraordinarily for so small an assembly: absurdly, it might be thought:
but these provoked a kind warm smile, with the exclamation: 'They are
dears!' They were the dearer for their fads and foibles.

Music harmonized them. Music, strangely, put the spell on Colney Durance,
the sayer of bitter things, manufacturer of prickly balls, in the form of
Discord's apples of whom Fenellan remarked, that he took to his music
like an angry little boy to his barley-sugar, with a growl and a grunt.
All these diverse friends could meet and mix in Victor's Concert-room
with an easy homely recognition of one another's musical qualities, at
times enthusiastic; and their natural divergencies and occasional clashes
added a salient tastiness to the group of whom Nesta could say: 'Mama,
was there ever such a collection of dear good souls with such contrary
minds?' Her mother had the deepest of reasons for loving them, so as not
to wish to see the slightest change in their minds, that the accustomed
features making her nest of homeliness and real peace might be retained,
with the humour of their funny silly antagonisms and the subsequent march
in concord; excepting solely as regarded the perverseness of Priscilla
Graves in her open contempt of Mr. Pempton's innocent two or three
wine-glasses. The vegetarian gentleman's politeness forbore to direct
attention to the gobbets of meat Priscilla consumed, though he could
express disapproval in general terms; but he entertained sentiments as
warlike to the lady's habit of 'drinking the blood of animals.' The
mockery of it was, that Priscilla liked Mr. Pempton and admired his
violoncello-playing, and