ssey; "and I've managed to
survive it. It's not Chicago, of course; it's just Dublin, and it doesn't
pretend to be anything else."

"Just so," said Pinckney. He felt that he had put his foot in it;
recalling his own lightly spoken words he felt shocked at his want of
tact, and he was casting about for something to say about the sacred city
of a friendly nature but not too fulsome, when Byrne opened the door and
announced that dinner was served.

CHAPTER III

Phyl led the way and they crossed the hall to the dining-room, a room
oak-panelled like the library and warm with the light of fire and
candles.

Once upon a time there had been high doings in this sombre room, hunt
breakfasts and dinners, rousing songs, laughter, and the toasting of
pretty women--now dust and ashes.

Here highly coloured gentlemen had slept the sleep of the just, under the
table, whilst the ladies waited in vain for them in the drawing-room, here
Colonel Berknowles had drunk a glass of mulled wine on that black morning
over a hundred-and-thirty years ago when he went out with Councillor
Kinsella and shot him through the lungs by the Round House on the
Arranakilty Road. The diminutive Tom Moore had sung his songs here "put
standing on the table" by the other guests, and the great Dan had held
forth and the wind had dashed the ivy against the windows just as it did
to-night with fist-fulls of rain from the Slieve Bloom Mountains. Byrne
had put the big silver candlesticks on the table in honour of the guest,
and he now appeared bearing in front of him a huge dish with a cover a
size too small for it.

He placed the dish before Mr. Hennessey and removed the cover, disclosing
a cod's "head and shoulders" whilst a female servant appeared with a dish
of potatoes boiled in their jackets and a tureen of oyster sauce.

Now a cod's head and shoulders served up like this in the good old Irish
way is, honestly, a ghastly sight. The thing has a countenance and an
expression most forbidding and all its own.

The appearance of the old dish cover, clapped on by the cook in a hurry in
default of the proper one, had given Phyl a turn and now she was wondering
what Mr. Pinckney was thinking of the fish and the manner of its serving.

All at once and as if stimulated into life by the presence of the new
guest, all sorts of qualms awoke in her mind. The dining arrangements of
the better class Irish are, and always have been, rather primitive,
haphazar