Even the devotion of my eldest sister was unsettled, and we could see her mobile lips twitch. It sufficed to reveal to us that the autocrat was off guard, and we lay about the floor, and shrieked with delight. Whenever he met my eldest sister upon the roads or rocks, the elegant guardsman raised his hat with the air of a prince, and never a hint about him of nocturnal iniquities. But austere as she was in all things pertaining to discipline and religion, she allowed us unbounded freedom out-of-doors. Some notion of our use of that liberty may be seized from the following ejaculations of an elderly bachelor, a political friend, who came to visit my stepfather, and was confronted with this young saint of the golden locks, the established mistress of a large household. The elderly gentleman, looking out of the window in front, perceived two little boots dangling from the branch of a high tree, almost against the heaven. "Who's up that tall tree?" asked the elderly gentleman. "Oh, that's Angela. She always reads up there." "Bless my soul!" exclaimed the elderly gentleman. After further conversation, he walked down the room to examine the view from the back. In gazing across the sea, seemingly near Howth, he detected a rock point surrounded with heavy waves, and two little specks upon this rock. "It looks as if there were some creatures in danger of being drowned," remarked the elderly gentleman. "Oh, not at all. That's Pauline's rock. She and Birdie always go out when the tide is out, and spend the whole day wading there, and they come back when the tide runs out again." "My God!" cried the elderly gentleman. Looking later up to the stable roof, he saw three little golden heads bent over cards. "What's that?" he blankly asked. "Those are the three youngest, playing beggar-my-neighbour on the roof." "What extraordinary children!" muttered the elderly gentleman. She devised a notable and original punishment for me whenever I flew into one of my diabolical rages. She would order Miss Kitty, the sentimental little stitcher, to hold my feet, a servant to hold my head, and while I lay thus on the ground in durance vile, she would piously besprinkle me with holy water, and audibly beseech the Lord and my guardian angel to deliver me of the devil. It would be difficult for me to conceive an operation more suitable as entertainment of the devil than my sister's pious and fiendish method of obtaining his dismissal. The first thing I inevitably did, when liberated, was to go into the yard, and pump all the holy water off my wicked person. Then, dripping like a Newfoundland, I would return to the house and decline to change my dress or shoes, in the vociferated hope of immediate death from consumption. Chapter XXV. OUR BALL.