At intervals in all histories there comes a pause, in which the
moralities proper to the occasion are assembled, expounded and
expanded. Such a moment might now seem to have arrived, its theme
being the grain-of-mustard-seed-like character of the Cluhir picnic,
as compared with the events that subsequently dwelt in its branches,
nesting there, and raising up other events that flew far and wide,
farther and wider than they can here be followed. But since moralities
appeal only to the moral (to whom they are superfluous) it seems
advisable to proceed at once to the primary result, which was the
concert, that sprang like a Phoenix from the ashes of that fire on
which the picnic kettle was boiled.

The scheme had various appeals for its two chief promoters, young Mr.
Coppinger and Sub. Lieut. Talbot-Lowry, R.N. Immanent in it was the
necessity for frequent, almost for daily, visits to No. 6, The Mall,
Cluhir. For the former of these gentlemen, whose acquaintance with the
Mangan family was now of long, if of intermittent, familiarity, these
visits afforded a less thrilling emotion than they held for the
latter, who found himself honoured and welcomed in a degree to which
he was quite unaccustomed at home. Larry was not quite sure that he
approved of this blaze of social success for his young cousin. It is
one thing to receive, languidly, the adulation of those in whom such
adulation may be regarded as an indication of a widening horizon; but
when an equal veneration is lavished upon the junior and disdained
play-fellow of earlier years, the result is often a reconsideration of
values. The May madness that rose like a mist from the bluebells in
the woods of the Ownashee, and culminated in the magical light of the
full moon, began to lift from the spirit of young Mr. Coppinger,