My parents kept "open house" with a vengeance, which is the reason to-day that none of us possess the needful sixpence to jingle on the traditional tombstone. It was the reason also that, when our ball came off, we children were in a position to offer our thirty or forty miniature guests flowing bowls of innocuous lemonade by the dozens, ham-sandwiches, boxes of Huntley & Palmer's biscuits, baskets of apples purchased by the hundred by my stepfather from his friend the judge, whose orchards we daily pillaged. There was also claret and soda-water, and even genial port and sherry, for that portion of the community we regarded as "the grown-up,"--Arthur, the red-headed boy, Saint Agnes, Pauline, and a few others of both sexes. We discovered that my parents designed to sit out a play on a certain evening, which meant that they would never give themselves the trouble to catch the last train, and would sleep in town. Invitations were instantly despatched, Saint Agnes giving her consent reluctantly, but young enough to enjoy the prospect of the escapade. The ball was to open as soon as possible after the seven o'clock tea, for at Dalkey, in those days, all the children dined at two o'clock and sat down at seven to a meal of tea and bread-and-butter, with barmbrack and buttered toast on high holidays. By eight o'clock the long drawing-room was full. We lit the clusters of tapers round the walls, which were reserved for the pleasures of our elders. The gas flared in every jet of the big chandelier. You might have fancied we were celebrating a Royal birthday, such was the brilliancy of our illuminated ball-room. Arthur had brought down, before tea, bunches of flowers from his father's hothouse, and Saint Agnes was ever a veritable witch in the arrangement of flowers. The red-haired chief, as master of the ceremonies, wore a huge peony in his buttonhole, and with what gusto he marshalled us about, told off couples, and shouted "Lancers now," or "Look out now, the Caledonian Quadrille." Three quaint little girls had been allowed to come with their governess, who entered heartily into the spirit of the thing, and never left the piano. Quadrille after polka, waltz after schottische, "Sir Roger de Coverley," mazurka, and gallop. And, between the dances, what riotous fun, when we cast ourselves upon the refreshments, and noisy boys risked death and assassination as they opened lemonade and soda-water bottles with a splendid flourish! Our elders might drink themselves to frenzy on whisky and yet remain more sober than we were as we capered and laughed and quaffed big draughts of harmless fluid. And the sandwiches we ate, the biscuits and apples we devoured, the bread-and-butter we munched, and flick, flack! there was Miss Montgomery at the piano, and dozens of little feet were again twinkling about the floor.