At Twelve Tonight by Catherine Louisa Pirkis

It was the last day of the old year, and, there could be no denying the fact, Nellie was in a very bad temper indeed.

The self-invited guests had now been a fortnight in the house, and during that fortnight, to Nellie's fancy, Beatrix had turned things generally upside down. She had taken entire possession of the Professor, and had altogether made a new creature of him. It was funny to see her driving him in the little pony-cart into the village, or anywhere else she chose to go, and entertaining him meanwhile with light talk as if he were an ordinary beef-eating individual instead of one who had walked in converse with the Muses from his earliest years. It was funnier still to see him at the close of such drives and talks walking calmly up to his study and saying a pleasant word to anyone who chanced to be near before shutting himself in, instead of, as of yore, rushing frantically up the stairs as if he were being pursued by ten thousand fiends, and informing the household generally, as he clanged to his door, that he was "The sport of fate, and that his relatives, one and all, were thorns in his side and scourges to his flesh."