Soon after the death of Pigott Mr. Parnell met Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone at Mrs. Sydney Buxton's[5] "at home." {266} Almost the only comment, when he got home was: "That's over; thank goodness!" On May 28th, 1889, Sir Charles and Lady Russell gave a reception in honour of the hero of the fight. Parnell hated these affairs, but, as I pointed out to him, it would be very sad if all those people assembled to meet him and he was not there. The reception was a time of adulation for him from first to last, I afterwards heard, but when Parnell came home and told me all about it he remarked, "It was all very kind and just as troublesome as usual--or would have been had I not discovered a pretty little brown head with friendly eyes that looked as shy as I felt." I answered, "Dear me, who was this charming lady? I should like to know!" "That is just what she was, a charming little lady, an Irishwoman. You know, Queenie, you are the only Englishwoman I can bear! This was Katharine Tynan; you read some of her things to me," and he went on to speak of others at the reception, afterwards reverting to the pleasure he had felt in meeting Katharine Tynan, who he believed genuinely felt what all "those others" were saying. Presumably "those others" were perfectly sincere in their appreciation of him, but Parnell, so English in his own nature, had a constitutional distrust of English people, and, curiously enough, he did not understand them well, while the Irish character was an open book to him. At a reception like this where the guests were, of course, mostly English, Parnell would retire behind his coldest, most aloof bulwark of exquisite courtesy, and, to use his own simile about Katharine Tynan, "I felt as though a little friendly bird had made a song for me in {267} an unfriendly land." We often afterwards spoke of the "little friendly bird," and, should Mrs. Hinkson (Katharine Tynan) ever see this book, she will know that the "Chief" appreciated both her loyalty and her song. Directly the result of the Parnell Commission was made known Mr. Parnell was elected a life member of the National Liberal Club; an election which afforded him a certain grave amusement at the time and a query later on, when the "National Liberals" wished to depose him, as to whether a "life member" can dare be so illogical as to continue life without the membership. On the 8th March, 1889, he was entertained for the second time at the Eighty Club, and, a few days later, at a great meeting at St. James's Hall. At both meetings the enthusiasm was so great that the whole body of people present rose en masse as he entered, cheering, waving handkerchiefs, and shouting his name for some time before they allowed him to sit down. Naturally these ovations of my hero gave me the greatest pride and joy, but he would never allow me to say much about them.