Miss Malone is her mother’s right hand, a first-rate household adjutant, but her father and brother’s pest; she acts as revising editor to all their best stories. She knows when Denis is at Nolan’s (the nearest public-house), instead of being, as the Major imagines, in bed with toothache. She knows _why_ her mother hides the key of the cellarette, and why her father never opens, but angrily tears up, all communications in certain blue envelopes. In short, she is wise beyond her years. Opposite to Cuckoo sits George, the new arrival, in whose honour are the branch candlesticks, topaz ornaments, and dessert. He is a good-looking young man, with a broad forehead, a pair of very expressive eyes, and a carefully cultivated dark moustache, and, but that his aquiline nose is too large for his face (or it may be that his face is too thin for his nose) he would be remarkably handsome; well-favoured, well-dressed, and well-bred, he makes an effective Valentine to his brother’s Orson. In spite of his gallant efforts, conversation languishes; queries about hunting and shooting fall woefully flat; his relatives evince but a tepid interest in India, and his homeward voyage; to tell the truth the Major’s great mind is concentrated on his plate. Mrs. Malone’s thoughts are distracted by an alarming letter which she received from the family grocer as she came down to dinner, and Denis is wondering how his brother makes his tie, and if he will lend him twenty pounds. Cuckoo, who has the unintelligible desire to talk, common to her sex and years, converses affably for all, and keeps her unhappy mother on thorns, lest she should disclose too many domestic secrets. Having disposed of her pudding with startling rapidity, she said, as she scraped her plate: “Mother made this plum pudding herself; she always makes the sweets now. Last Christmas, Eliza, the cook, was drunk; she sent the pudding up, stuck all over with lighted matches; it looked so funny; she drank the whisky! Once she got at father’s whisky, that he keeps----” “There, that will do, Cuckoo,” said the Major, sharply. “Hold your tongue; I wish there was a fly blister on it.” By the time the decanters were placed before him, the Major’s own tongue was loosened, and he proceeded to discuss the neighbourhood with considerable animation. _Apropos_ of their own vicinity, he said: “Nothing but parsons and old women about here now, George! Great changes, you will hardly know any one in the parish. Eh! what? what?” He usually concluded his sentence with this query, repeated as sharply as a postman’s knock. “There are the Finnys and Miss Dopping,” said Mrs. Malone, “and the Wildes of Wildpark, and the Moores of Roskeen. I don’t think you know Mrs. Redmond. She came since you were here last. She has a daughter----” “I should rather think she _had_ a daughter,” interrupted the Major, rapturously. “There is not a handsomer girl between this and Dublin. Eh! what? what?”