"I suppose we'll all be going there soon," she went on. "Uncle says if Home Rule comes there won't be a fox or a Protestant left in Ireland in ten years' time; and he said, what's more, that if _he_ had to choose it mightn't be the Protestants he'd keep! But that was because the Dissenting Minister's wife sent in a claim of five pounds to the Fowl Fund, and said she'd put down poison if she didn't get it." Not thus did Philippa and old McRory, at their end of the table, fleet the time away. Old McRory, as far as I could judge, spoke not at all, but played tunes with his fingers on the tablecloth, or preoccupied himself with what seemed to be an endeavour to plait his beard into a point. On my wife's other hand was an unknown gentleman, with rosy cheeks, a raven moustache, and a bald head, who was kind enough to solace her isolation with facetious stories, garnished with free and varied gestures with his knife, suggestive of sword-practice, all concluding alike in convulsive tenor laughter. I was aware, not unpleasantly, that Philippa was bearing the brunt of the McRory bean-feast. When at length my wife's release was earned, and the ladies had rustled from the room in her wake, with all the conscious majesty of the Mantle Department, I attempted some conversation with my host, but found that it was more considerate to leave him to devour unmolested the crystallised fruits and chocolates that were not, I felt quite sure, provided by Mrs. McRory for the Master of the House. I retired upon the D.I., my opinion of whom had risen since I saw him swallow his salted champagne without a change of countenance. That he addressed me as "Sir" was painful, but at about my age these shocks have to be expected, and are in the same category as lumbago, and what my dentist delicately alludes to as "dentures." The young District Inspector of Irish Constabulary has wisdom beyond his years: we talked profoundly of the state of the country until the small voice of old McRory interrupted us. "Major," it said, "if you have enough drink taken we might join the ladies." Most of the other gallants had already preceded us, and as I crossed the hall I heard the measured pounding of a waltz on the piano: it created an impulse, almost as uncontrollable as that of Spurius Lartius and Herminius, to dart back to the dining-room. "That's the way with them every night," said old McRory dispassionately. "They mightn't go to bed now at all." Old McRory had a shadowy and imperceptible quality that is not unusual in small fathers of large families; it always struck me that he understood very thoroughly the privileges of the neglected, and pursued an unnoticed, peaceful, and observant path of his own in the background. I watched him creep away in his furtive, stupefied manner, like a partly-chloroformed ferret. "'Oh, well is thee, thou art asleep!'--or soon will be," I said to myself, as I turned my back on him and faced the music.