OF A TOWN THAT WOULD LAUGH AT THE GREAT. AND HOW A DULL COMPANY WAS
CURED BY AN IRISH SONG.

We left the Misses Buzza engaged in rowing their papa homewards.
The Three Queens as they steered King Arthur to Avilion can have been
no sadder pageant. It is true the Misses Buzza grieved for no
Excalibur, but the Admiral had lost his cocked-hat.

Picture to yourself that procession: the journey past the jetties;
the faces that grinned down from overhanging hulls, or looked out
hurriedly at casements and grew pale; the blue-jerseyed Trojan
lounging on the quay, and pausing in his whistle to stare; the Trojan
maidens gazing, with arrested needle; the shipwrights dropping mallet
and tar-pot; the ferrymen resting on their oars; the makers of ship's
biscuit rushing out, with aprons flying, to see the sight; the
butcher, the baker, the candle-stick maker--each and all agog.
Then imagine the Olympian mirth that ran along the waterside when
Troy saw the joke, and, hand on hip, laughed with all its lungs.

But even this was not the worst: no, nor the crowd of urchins
that followed from the landing-stage and cheered at intervals.
It was when Admiral Buzza looked up and spied the face of Mrs.
Goodwyn-Sandys at an upper window of "The Bower," that the cup of
his humiliation indeed brimmed over.

Mrs. Buzza, "tittivating" at the mirror, heard the stir, and,
presentient of evil, rushed down-stairs. She saw her lord restored
to her, dear but damp. Yet she "nor swooned, nor uttered cry:" she
simply sat violently and suddenly down upon the hall-chair, and
piteously stared.