It is necessary to have attained to a reasonably advanced age to be
able to recognise pathos in the fatuities that so frequently form a
feature of love's young dream. Christian, listening with one ear to
her brother and cousin, while into the other the genuine idiom of her
native land flowed, ardently, from the now unsealed lips of Barty
Mangan, began to wonder why the boys were talking like stage Irishmen;
Georgy, she knew, was idiot enough for anything, but she had to admit
to herself that Larry, also, was rather overdoing it. Christian was
able to feel amused, but she also felt, quite illogically, that what
had been distaste for Tishy Mangan was rapidly deepening into dislike.

The picnic raged on, with prodigious eatings and drinkings, with
capsizings of teapots in full sail, with disastrous slaughterings of
insects (disastrous to plates and tablecloths rather than to the
insects) with facetious doings with heated tea-spoons and pellets of
bread, with, in short, all that Mrs. Mangan and her fellow hostesses
expected of a truly prosperous picnic.

Captain Cloherty, alone, of all the company, failed to contribute his
share to the sum of success. He sat silent, a thing of gloom, the
lively angle of whose waxed, red moustache only accentuated the
downward droop of the mouth beneath it. But the skeleton at the feast
has its uses, if only as a contrast, and Mrs. Mangan, who was more
observant than she appeared to be, noted the gloom with a gratified
eye, and being entirely aware of its cause, said to herself with
satisfaction:

"Ha, ha, me young man!"