“Just for this, then,--that it was young Massingbred gave him a letter to his father, recommending him for some place or other. Half of the borough expects to be in the Treasury, or the Post-Office, or the Board of Trade; and I was just on the tip of saying what a set of rapscallions they were. I 'm sure I don't know what saved me from it.” “Your natural discretion, doubtless,” said Joe, smiling. “Just so; it must have been that!” replied he, with a sigh. “You'll breakfast with me to-morrow, Crow, at eight,” said Nelligan, as he parted with him at the door. And Simmy, having pledged himself to be punctual, hurried off to keep his dinner appointment. CHAPTER XXII. A DAY “AFTER” The reaction that succeeds to a period of festivity has always an air of peculiar sadness and gloom about it. The day after a ball, the withered flowers, the faded decorations, the disordered furniture,--all tell the tale of departed pleasure and past enjoyment. The afternoon of that morning which has witnessed a wedding-breakfast,--the April landscape of joy and grief, the bridal beauty, and the high-beating hope of the happy lover, have all fled; and in the still and silent chambers there seems to brood a sense of sorrow and mourning. Still with these thoughts happier memories are mingled. The bright pageant of the past rises again before the mind; and smiles and music and laughter and graceful forms come back, and people space with their images. But how different from all this was the day after the election at Cro' Martin! For a week had the Martins condescended to derogate from their proud station and “play popular” to the electors of Oughterard. They had opened their most sumptuous apartments to vulgar company, and made guests of those they deemed inferior to their own domestics. They had given dinners and suppers and balls and picnics. They had lavished all the flatteries of attentions on their rude neighbors. They had admitted them to all the privileges of a mock equality, “so like the real article as not to be detected.” They had stored their minds with all the lives and adventures of these ignoble intimates, so as to impart a false color of friendship to their conversation with them; in a word, and to use one by which her Ladyship summed up all the miseries of the occasion, they had “demoralized” more in a week than she believed it possible could have been effected in ten years. Let us be just, and add that my Lady had taken the phrase bodily out of her French vocabulary, and in her ardor applied it with its native signification,--that is, she alluded to the sad consequences of association with underbred company, and not by any means to any inroads made upon her sense of honor and high principle.