our way down the stairs. Theodora was on my arm. I was afraid she might faint before we got her into the coach. "Are you ill?" I whispered, squeezing her arm gently to the lappel of my coat with my elbow. "I hope you were not very much frightened?" Upon this the charming girl treated me to a dazzling stare of her fine black eyes, and burst out laughing. "Ah! Then, is it what you're jokin' me, you are, Mr. Toole? says she. "Affeard, indeed! I wish you saw the stones and claealpins hoppin' on and off the boys' polls at the Fair of Killbattery. Ha, ha! Papa's nothing the worse, ye see; and, indeed, the smack of it took a start out of me, for I only saw it with the corner of my eye, and I could not tell but it was a paving-stone was in it, and the pulp flying out alarmed me for a moment for the dear man's brains. And mamma got it, too; that was a cat, or my name's not Theodora. Mamma! Who's she with? Oh, Mundy, I see. Mamma, dear, how's your head?"" "Bad enough, joole," rejoined Mrs. Molloy. "My beautiful turbot's rooned and smathered on my head!" The people who looked round to see who the speaker was who had suffered in so unusual a way, beheld Mrs. Molloy with old Molloy's red and yellow silk pocket-handkerchief tied under her chin, holding her wig and turban down in their place, and looking, certainly, not unlike that class of ladies who used to carry flatfish on their heads, and certainly I did feel a little bashful about her, for one side of her wig was dangling from under Molloy's handkerchief between her shoulders, and the Figgesses, who were coming down the stairs behind us, were laughing like hyenas. I don't think there was an unlucky thing happened to us that night but the eyes of that same beastly family were upon us. I was thankful when Mrs. Molloy was shut up in her hack coach, and her daughter, her husband and myself in ours. We had all recovered our spirits by the time we had reached our destination on Ormond Quay. Up the stairs we stumbled, talking altogether, and into the front drawing-room, where Juggy Hanlon had already lighted candles. Mrs. Molloy slipped quietly upstairs to restore her dis tracted head to order, while we talked on in the room where we had first mustered, and we could hear the servants tramping up and down the back drawing-room, clinking plates, and jingling spoons and knives and forks, and squabbling in loud and voluble accents over the arrangement of the supper. "Mr. Lieutenant Kramm has just been telling me, Miss Theodora, that your music is all that I should have anticipated," said I; "would it be asking too great a favor from a nightingale to sing us a song from the perch of that musicstool, and to accompany itself with a few harmonious touches of that fortepiano?" I give you this pretty speech in full, to show you how much pains I was taking to gain the beautiful creature's heart. Lieutenant Kramm says more than his prayers, I'm afraid," says she, sitting down carelessly before the instrument. Not that I sing like a nightingale, for I know very well that I don't." But she looked all the time as if she thought that she did. "You don't sing like the nightingale in this one respect," said I,, "that you excel it beyond all calculation. "I don't mind a word you're saying, Mr. Toole; I think it's what you want to make a fool of me," said the young lady. 'Miss Molloy does not sing like the nightingale for all listeners," says Kramm, "only for her particular friends." "That's it, I hope," said I, "and I devoutly entreat that I may be included among the number.' "Sing that glorious thing you astonished me with the other morning," said Mundy, joining the chorus of supplication. "If you don't, I'll beg of Mr. Molloy to use his influence as a father.” "Well, then, I suppose I may as well," says she. "I'll sing you one of Tommy Moore's melodies." And, by the powers, so she did! She struck up on the piano, and I was delighted and, I do assure you, half frightened by the power of her voice. Since I heard old "Whisky Tay" in the blackhole I had never listened to anything in the way of music half so loud! She had a way of throwing her voice into the words and swelling them out that I never heard equalled; and when she came to the part: "The mo-hoon hid her li-hight, In the heavens that ni-hi-hight, And wept behind a clou-houd, O'er the maiden's shee-aim." I was perfectly ravished. "More power! My blessing! May I never, but that was singing!" said I, in a state of extraordinary enthusiasm; and I do assure you I hardly knew whether I was on my head or my heels. "Thank you! thank you!! THANK YOU!!!" I cried with growing fervor. "God bless you, my darling Miss Theodora, that was astonishing!" Mundy was laughing all this time with 'Ha! ha! ha! and no more disguise than he would at a clown in a circus. a What are you laughing at, Mundy?" said I, turning on him as if I'd eat him up, with a stamp on the floor, for which I afterwards apologized to Miss Molloy, for it raised such a dust between me and Mundy I could scarcely see him, and I heard the young lady blowing and phewing, and slapping her hair with her pocket-handkerchief; and old Molloy was taken with a fit of coughing. "Laughing!" says Mundy. "Ha! ha ha! phew! I say, where's the good of smothering us? Ha ha! ha! why, man, I tell you it is-ha! ha! ha!-hyssis-sis-sisterical-ha! ha! ha! I can't help it, I tell you, I-ha! ha! ha!-have a sort of trembling inside whenever I'm very much moved. Miss Molloy knows all about it. Don't be a fool; I told her long ago. I've had it on parade, and at funerals, and at divine service, by Jove, and I'll not be cross-questioned, nor bamboozled, nor made more nervous by any man living. You believe me, Miss Molloy, and that's all I care about." "Ah! Be quiet, Toole, will ye!" It was the first time she called me by my surname, and I felt so happy I could have forgiven Mundy if he had pulled me by the nose. "It's true for him; he does really he laughs whenever he's near cryin'. It happened to myself once, when I was getting well o' the swine-pock. Sure didn't I see the way he was over the beautiful verses my poor Uncle Barney wrote, when he was leaving Ireland in a decline, and he called the pome a Farewell to Allyballycarick-o-dooley,' which was the name of his place, and there's hardly one in the world could read it without cry ing; and I give you my word, it was from one split of laughing with him into another! Not but what I think it would be better manners if he run his head in a pittaytie-pot, and clapped it out o' the windy, sooner than offend people by his weakness, when he felt the fit comin' him," she concluded, with a little severity. The discussion was ended at this point by the return of Mrs. Molloy, with her second best wig and turbot" on her head; and just as we were going into supper in came Sidebotham. His eye was a little more than sky-blue and yellow now, and a small slip of black plaster, instead of the bit of basilicon, as big as a turnpike-ticket, that was stuck across the bridge of his nose. He was not by any means so stand-off with me as when I last met him, and seemed disposed to be conciliatory, and indeed he went the length of borrowing five pounds from me as we went away. I don't know how we bundled in to supper. I only know that I found myself beside Theodora. It was really an elegant supper. I remember it well, and I may as well tell you that old Molloy had a loin of roast pork before him; and there was a big square of bacon, with greens, before Sidebotham-we were running, you see, a good deal on the pigs; before Mrs. Mol loy, and as fat as herself, there was a grand roast goose, that came all the way from Connaught, and more fool it, considering all the good it got by the journey! And there was cow-heel and tripe, a dish that old Molloy fondly lost himself in, whenever he could get at it. There was enough cold-cannon to load a hod with; potatoes with and without the skins; there was a mountain of pancakes you might put a child to bed on; and such a good smell of stuffing, and onions, and gravy over all, that I declare to you I don't think the Prince Regent had a finer supper that night. We were mortal hungry, and for a time conversation was a little dull; but I had the pleasure of hearing Theodora`s beautiful voice every now and then, between the sounds of chumping, and munching, and gulping all round, calling on me for those little refined attentions that constitute, I may say, all the chivalry of the supper-table. Now it was: "Mr. Toole, may I be troublesome to you for the gherkins?" And again "Another help o' the stuffin', ask manma, Mr. Toole.' Or Show me the mustard, if you please?" Or "Will ye give me a dust of that pepper, Mr. Toole?" I do assure you it was one delightful round of similar requests and attentions all through the supper-time, and as the glorious girl had a fine appetite, she worked me, in that way, to my heart's content. 66 But this was only child's play compared with what followed, when the old lady called out: Come, Molloy, where's the punch? What are you foosthering about? We're all choking with the drooth, and lookin' at ye like so many dying fishes out o' water. There's Mr. Upside-" 66 66 Sidebotham," said the lieutenant. Upsidedownbotham-well, whatever it is, the young captain there, that we knew in Athlone, is makin' signs to me this half hour for drink. Come, man, stir. Juggy, good girl, bring the kittle; there's two bottle of the right sort at your elbow, and half a dozen elegant lemons. Putt down the bowl before him, Juggy, that's a darlint, and don't be sousing the wather in as if you were drownding so many rats. Do you know what, Mr. Upside, Mr. Downbotham, that's it; just look at that bowl-it houlds seven pints and about a wine-glass; that's the very bowl Molloy was baptized in!" And she nodded impressively at Sidebotham, just as Molloy squeezed a lemon into the sacred vessel. As sure as you sit there, Mr. Back-what's your name?-no matter, I wish there was no such things as names, barrin' Christian names, of course, for the sake of religion; but what was I saying? Yes; he was baptized in that very bowl!" Not ducked in it?" says Sidebotham. "No; but sprinkled out of it by the Reverend Father Haddock.' He drank like a fish, I dare say, ma'am," said Sidebotham, who didn't care a fig what he said to any one. "I don't know, my dear, but he baptized like a Christian; and he met his death, most unfortunately, by being drownded in a bog-hole. He being a portly man, standing too near the edge, the bank gave way, and himself, and a child, and an ass and cart was all drownded together. I remember seeing him myself." "Not in the bog-hole?" said the lieu tenant. "No, honey! It was in the high street of Athlone, when I was only a little slip of a colleen.' We must drink to his memory, ma'am," said Sidebotham. "With all my heart, joole," said Mrs. Molloy, who, barring a few political toasts, did not object to drink to anything. By this time the punch, one of the few good things we unquestionably owe to England, was brewed; and infinite credit it did its " composer. Our Philomel was the only one of the party who partook of that wonderful elixir with extreme moderation. That nightingale only touched it lightly, as it were, with her musical beak, once or twice, and, content with this little sip, listened to our agreeable conversation, our toasts, and sentiments, and to a great deal of fiery and confidential nonsense from your humble servant. After this, I can recall nothing distinctly, except the general consciousness that I never was so happy in the course of my life; only I once or twice observed that Kramm, who sat at Theodora's other side, and did not seem to hear a word I said, kept interrupting the girl with his longwinded stories; and then I remember Sidebotham seeing me home, and talking to him a great deal about Theodora, and something very touching was said that affected me, for I remember crying while he held my hand, and I held the railings, and I lent him some money, and how I got to my bed I don't know. on time, and in perfect order. A model of precision. Neatness exemplified. Wanted to go back. Disgusted with life. Inward emotions overpowering. Stew ard said, fight against it. Tried to, but couldn't. Mental determination insufficient. Groans from A flat to G sharp. Portholes barred. Fresh air to be avoided. Don't want to see Europe. Nothing there to see. Won't pay for this. A sail passing to starboard! Don't want to see a sail. Don't want to see a whale. Want to go home. Had enough. Evening, carried on deck by steward (or rather dragged). Stopped at half-way house for refreshments. Felt better. Rested an hour on deck. Gazing toward the setting sun. Homesick! Oh, no! Tried to go back alone. Slipped and Convenient resting-place. rolled down stairs. Stopped at bottom. Hauled to room by steward. More arrowroot and brandy. Quite soothing. Hat and shawl hung up on floor. First clean collar. Brushed and cleaned my clothes. More recognitions. Service in saloon. Meals at a discount. Dining-room kept Prayers read for the Queen. aloof. Quite appropriate. Shall see her shortly. Dinner at 4. Fearful appetite. A pig in appearance. A pig in fact. Iceberg at 5. Served up on deck. Left table at once. 100 feet high and 2 miles square. Very cooling. Next course, fruits and coffee. 6 P. M. -5 sails in sight. A COLONEL ON GUARD DUTY. Lieutenant of one of the Ohio regiments, was making a detail of men to guard a lot of army stores captured from the enemy. He approached a crowd of men all wearing overcoats, such as Uncle Sam gives hissoger boys," and selected four or five for special duty. It happened that Lieutenant-Colonel Gazley, of the Thirty-seventh Indiana, was in the crowd, and was selected by the lieutenant. This was fun for the colonel, who without a word shouldered a gun and went to his post of duty. Not long afterward, the lieutenant, going his rounds, discovered by the firelight the bugle upon Gazley's cap. He rather authoritatively inquired where he got that bugle? The colonel dryly replied that he " must have picked up an officer's сар, somewhere," and with this very reasonable explanation the lieutenant passed on. The colonel stood his turn of "special detail" all night long, and was found in the morning walking his post with true soldierly gait and pace. Having laid off his overcoat, his shoulder-straps appeared very conspicuously in connection with the musket on his shoulder. As soon as the lieutenant discovered a colonel on guard, WHY DON'T THE MEN PROPOSE? I'm sure I've done my best, mamma, I'm ever on the watch: I've tried to win by languishing And dressing like a blue; I threw aside the books, and thought Plain "yesses" or plain "noes," I |