his tyranny on "his fine pet," as she, in high indignation, described
Larry to herself. Master Coppinger might be a man of property and the
owner of Coppinger's Court, yes, or Dublin Castle, for all she cared!
Pappy might say what he liked, but _she_ wouldn't be bothered
with a boy like that! And there was Ned Cloherty--(this was the
medical student)--that she had as good as asked to come--and what
could she say to him now, she wondered? So Tishy sulked, and resented
the Hidden Hand, that so inevitably linked her with the owner of
Coppinger's Court, as much as did that man of property himself.

The evening wore on; with romping, with screaming, with enormous
consumption of various foods, and with an ever-heightening
temperature, that was specially noticeable among those seniors who had
not disdained the brew of punch that had coincided with the
announcement of midnight, made, with maddening deliberation, by Mrs.
Mangan's cuckoo-clock. The usual delirium of cracker-head-dresses had
befallen the company. Larry, decorated with a dunce's cap, placed upon
his yellow head by a jovial matron, found himself fated, by a final
effort of penalising fancy on the part of another matron, to select "a
young lady," to conduct her to the topmost step of the staircase, and
there, on his knees, to kiss either her shoe-buckle or her lips;
"whichever he likes best!" decreed the matron, archly.

It is strange how the reserves and reticences of childhood, the things
that offend, the things that bring agony, are forgotten by so many of
those who have left childhood behind. In extenuation of this lively
and kindly lady, it may be said that the manners and customs of her
early youth were not those to which Larry was habituated. Yet, one
might have thought that a glance at Larry's face would have sufficed
to induce Rhadamanthus himself to remit the penalty. Not so Mrs.