Had not Frederica Coppinger, resting in her club in Dublin, after a
severe afternoon with her dentist, some intuition, some
spirit-warning, of what was befalling at the home of her ancestors? I
believe that those spear-thrusts of nerve-pain that assailed her just
before dinner, must have been the result of the wireless summons of
distress sent forth to her by her upper-housemaid.

"What next, I wonder, will Master Larry be asking for?" said the upper
housemaid to the cook. "The drawing-room carpet pitched into the
study, and Miss Coppinger's own room turned upside down for the
riff-raff of Cluhir to be powdering their noses in! 'Haven't she no
powder?' says they. 'No matter,' says the Doctor's daughter, 'sure I
have a book of it in me little bag!'"

"I wouldn't at all doubt her!" said the cook, saturninely, "But what's
the drawn'-room carpet to conjuring a supper out of me pocket in five
minutes? I ask you that, Eliza Hosford!"

None the less, with that deep loyalty to the honour of the house that
is a feature in Irish domestic life as wonderful as it is touching,
the staff of Coppinger's Court were resolved that--as they say in
China--the face of Master Larry should not be blackened, and The
Riff-Raff of Cluhir were served with a ceremony and a success that
left nothing to be desired.

Dr. Mangan sat in a very large armchair in front of a big fire of
logs, in the hall, and smoked meditatively, and was seemingly quite
unaware of the couples who moved past him between the dances, passing
out through the open hall-door into the moon-lit May night. He did not
even raise an eyelid when his daughter sailed by him, as she did many