'A little, Sir, maybe? Just for a maggot, I'll wager--like _my_ good lady, Mrs. Toole.' A nearer glance at his dress had satisfied Toole that he was too much of a maccaroni for an artist, and he was thinking of placing him upon the lord lieutenant's staff. 'We've capital horses here, if you want to go on to Leixlip,' (where--this between ourselves and the reader--during the summer months His Excellency and Lady Townshend resided, and where, the old newspapers tell us, they 'kept a public day every Monday,' and he 'had a levee, as usual, every Thursday.') But this had no better success. 'If you design to stay over the day, and care for shooting, we'll have some ball practice on Palmerstown fair-green to-day. Seven baronies to shoot for ten and five guineas. One o'clock, hey?' At this moment entered Major O'Neill, of the Royal Irish Artillery, a small man, very neatly got up, and with a decidedly Milesian cast of countenance, who said little, but smiled agreeably-- 'Gentlemen, your most obedient. Ha, doctor; how goes it?--anything new--anything _on_ the _Freeman_?' Toole had scanned that paper, and hummed out, as he rumpled it over,--'nothing--very--particular. Here's Lady Moira's ball: fancy dresses--all Irish; no masks; a numerous appearance of the nobility and gentry--upwards of five hundred persons. A good many of your corps there, major?' 'Ay, Lord Blackwater, of course, and the general, and Devereux, and little Puddock, and----' '_Sturk_ wasn't,' with a grin, interrupted Toole, who bore that practitioner no good-will. 'A gentleman robbed, by two foot-pads, on Chapelizod-road, on Wednesday night, of his watch and money, together with his hat, wig and cane, and lies now in a dangerous state, having been much abused; one of them dressed in an old light-coloured coat, wore a wig. By Jupiter, major, if I was in General Chattesworth's place, with two hundred strapping fellows at my orders, I'd get a commission from Government to clear that road. It's too bad, Sir, we can't go in and out of town, unless in a body, after night-fall, but at the risk of our lives. [The convivial doctor felt this public scandal acutely.] The bloody-minded miscreants, I'd catch every living soul of them, and burn them alive in tar-barrels. By Jove! here's old Joe Napper, of Dirty-lane's dead. Plenty of dry eyes after _him_. And stay, here's another row.' And so he read on.