Meanwhile I sat in my box sipping a small measure of claret--which stuff I wondered some could be found to approve so much of--and regarding sideways the others. The punch being brought, my cousin, with a lordly air, bade the other young man ladle it out, telling him coarsely to keep the glasses of the girls well filled, since they were capable of drinking the Liffey dry if 'twere full of liquor; and the women, taking no notice of these remarks, to which and similar ones they were probably well used, fell to discussing some play in which they were shortly to appear. "The lines are fair enough," said the elder of the two, whom Roderick had fallen foul of, to the other; "yet there are too many of them, and the action halts. Moreover, as for plot--why, there's none." "'Tis the failing of our modern playwrights," said her companion, "that there never seems to be any, so that the audiences soon weary of us. Yet, if at Lincoln's Inn or Drury Lane they would try more for the plot, I feel sure that----" "Plot!" here, however, interrupted my well beloved cousin, who was by this time approaching intoxication, and adding noise to his other modes of entertaining his guests, "who's talking about plots? Plots, forsooth!" And now he smiled feebly, and then hiccoughed, "Plots, eh? I know a plot, and a good one, too." "With submission, sir," said Doll, looking angrily at him--for she had evidently not forgiven his remarks--"we were talking about the difficulty that 'half-starved looking playwrights' found in imagining new plots for the playhouses and our crew, the actors. It follows, therefore, that even though the noble Mr. Roderick St. Amande should know a good plot, as he says, it could avail us nothing. He surely could not sink his nobility so low as to communicate such a thing to the poor mummers." "Ha, ha!" answered Roderick, "but couldn't he, though. I' faith, I'll tell you a good plot--take some more drink, I say!--and when next some snivel-nosed dramatist wants a--a--what d'ye call it, a--plot, tell him this." "We are all attention, sir. This is indeed an honour. We have of late had more than one noble lord as patron and poetaster--it seems we have another in store. Nell," to her companion, "listen carefully." "Doll, thou art a fool and a vixen too, especially when thou hast supped, as the black fellow calls it, not wisely but too well. Yet, listen. Thou hast heard of my uncle's death----" "Verily we have," interrupted Doll again. "All Dublin has. A noble lord buried by charity, and that not the charity of his relatives; a doubtful succession, an impugned title--ha! ha!--who has not heard of that! Yet, if this is the plot, 'tis useless for us. It may do in absolute real life, but not upon our boards. 'Twould be thought so unnatural and inhuman that, if we endeavoured to represent the thing, we should be hissed or worse."