e question with us.'

'What a country!' sighed the captain. 'I'd compose ye a song of old
Drowsylid, except that it does no good to be singing it at the only time
when you can show her the consequences of her sluggery. A country of
compromise goes to pieces at the first cannon-shot of the advance, and
while she's fighting on it's her poor business to be putting herself
together again: So she makes a mess of the beginning, to a certainty. If
it weren't that she had the army of Neptune about her--'

'The worst is she may some day start awake to discover that her
protecting deity 's been napping too.--A boy or girl did you say, my
dear?'

His wife replied: 'A son.'

'Ah! more births.' The captain appeared to be computing. 'But this one's
out of England: and it's a prince I suppose they'll call him: and princes
don't count in the population for more than finishing touches, like the
crossing of t's and dotting of i's, though true they're the costliest,
like some flowers and feathers, and they add to the lump on Barney's
back. But who has any compassion for a burdened donkey? unless when you
see him standing immortal meek! Well, and a child of some sort must have
been expected? Because it's no miracle after marriage: worse luck for the
crowded earth!'

'Things may not be expected which are profoundly distasteful,' Mrs.
Adister remarked.

'True,' said her sympathetic husband. ''Tis like reading the list of the
dead after a battle where you've not had the best of it--each name 's a
startling new blow. I'd offer to run to Earlsfont, but here's my company
you would have me join for the directoring of it, you know, my dear, to
ballast me, as you pretty clearly hinted; and all 's in the city to-day
like a loaf with bad yeast, thick as lead, and sour to boot. And a howl
and growl coming off the wilds of Old Ireland! We're smitten to-day in
our hearts and our pockets, and it 's a question where we ought to feel
it most, for the sake of our families.'

'Do you not observe that your cousins are not eating?' said his wife,
adding, to Patrick: 'I entertain the opinion that a sound
breakfast-appetite testifies to the proper vigour of men.'

'Better than a doctor's pass: and to their habits likewise,' Captain Con
winked at his guests, begging them to steal ten minutes out of the fray
for the inward fortification of them.

Eggs in the shell, and masses of eggs, bacon delicately thin and curling
like Apollo's locks at his temples,