"I hear you have a fish shop opened in Ballinagar, Mrs. M'Evoy," remarked the Doctor, taking his last fish bone out of action with professional adroitness, and addressing the mother of the young lady, "That's very up-to-date. There wasn't one I met from Ballinagar but was bragging of it." "It was the Hoolahanes that had it," said Mrs. M'Evoy. "It's closed." "Oh dear, why so?" said the Doctor. "Why did they do that, I wonder?" "They said that morning, noon, and night people were bothering them for fish," returned Mrs. M'Evoy, to whom this triumph of the artistic temperament presented no exceptional feature. "Unless it might be on a fast day, I'd never ask to taste a bit of fish," remarked James, giving a helping hand to the conversation. "There was a man I knew from this place got his death in Liverpool from a bit of fish. It stuck to the upper gum. 'Bill,' says he to the one that was with him, 'so help me God,' says he, 'I'm dyin',' says he; and sure that's how he met his death! It was in some grand hotel he was, and he was too shy to give the puff to send out the bit." "I'd like to send that to the 'B.M.J.'," said the Doctor gravely. "Maybe you could give me the man's name, James?" "There was them that could swear to it," said James, depositing a syphon on the table in a determined manner, "but they were before your day, Doctor Hickey." "How young he is!" said Miss M'Evoy archly. "Don't be flattering him, James." "Indeed I'll not flatter him," returned James, "there's plenty doing that." It was at about this point that a dish containing three roast ducks was placed in front of me. Circumstances had decreed that I sat at the end of the table; it was my task to deal with the ducks, and during the breathless and steamy struggle that ensued, I passed out of the conversation, which, indeed, had resolved itself into a more personal affair between Dr. Hickey and Miss M'Evoy. It was somewhere in the reposeful period that came with the cheese, that Dr. Hickey ordered a bottle of port, of which he very handsomely invited the ladies and me to partake. He leaned back in his chair. "Was this in the cellar the time of the flood?" he said, putting down his glass. "I don't mean Noah's flood, James; you mightn't remember that; but the time the river came up in the town here." "If it was Noah's flood itself," said James, instantly accepting combat, "it couldn't get into our cellars. But, faith, it was up in this room you're sitting in, and I had to get up on the table from it, and it ruz to the table, and I had to hang out of the chandelier, and a boat came into the room then and took me out. Sure that was the time that the porpoise came up the river, with the dint of the flood, and she was in it for a week, in front of the hotel." "In compliment to the visitors, I suppose?" said the Doctor. "And what happened her, James?"