party, immured herself again in her sedan-chair, with a heavily-sugared tumbler of the same dreadful _eau sucrée au rhum_ with which my cousin and I were toying. The sugar rose through the pale liquid in oily curls; the sickly smell of the rum ‘curdled under our noses,’ as a Cork carman said, in affected reprobation of a glass of whisky. It was as disagreeable a drink as I have ever had to undertake for convivial purposes, not even excepting _moût_ or ‘fresh’ poteen; and as we slowly sipped our way towards the two half-melted lumps in the bottom of the tumbler, not even the vanille biscuits could reconcile us to this too-concentrated nectar. But release from the necessity of drinking came unexpectedly. The yellow dog had returned with his mistress, and, finding the seclusion of the sentry-box unremunerative, he went round from chair to chair, staring at the biscuits of the revellers with filmy, greedy eyes, and when he came to me, rearing up on his hind legs and clawing importunately at my dress. I fed him, being weak-minded in such matters, and then I tried to pat his head. He immediately gave a shrill yelp and snapped at my hand, and, in the uncontrollable jump with which I saved my fingers, the remainder of the rum and water was spilled over my last clean skirt. A chorus of horror arose. The pallid face and weak saucer eyes of the timid aunt appeared furtively round the straw rim of the chair, and she murmured, ‘Mees! Mees!’ in tones of faint reproof. (I had forgotten to say that as the dog was supposed to be an English terrier, he was called ‘Miss,’ a generic term in France for the British dog, irrespective of size or sex.) Madame de Q. and the spotty cousin offered polite condolences; Monsieur de Q. aimed some opprobrious epithets at the offender instead of the kick that he so richly deserved; and Mdlle. Hortense in an instant whirled me out of my chair, through the drawing-room, and into a bedroom, there to take off my own skirt and endue one of hers, while mine was sent to the kitchen to be washed and dried. It took a fair amount of philosophic calm to walk back to the verandah in a full white calico skirt some four inches too short for me, and it was a relief to find that a number of fresh visitors had arrived, and that my entrance was consequently unobserved. Almost immediately afterwards, it was suggested that we should be taken to see the park, and I crouched down the verandah behind the crowd, trying to decrease my height by those uncompromising four inches, and painfully conscious that all the gentlemen of the party had remained behind, and were watching our exit with some interest. ‘Now _ces messieurs_ are content,’ said Mdlle. Rosalie, dropping behind to talk to me. ‘They will be able to talk of nothing but the vintage till we return--_ça m’agace!_’