not only
honourable but was also pathetic, so, when the picnic at large had
begun its leisurely advance through the woods to the promised land,
Christian selected the oldest and least promising of the Cluhir
matrons for her special attention, and made herself so agreeable to
her, that Barty Mangan, "mooching" (as his mother afterwards
reproached him) solitary, in the rear of the procession, found himself
in the remarkable position of wishing that he were his own great-aunt,
Mrs. Cantwell.

Barty Mangan's opportunities for meeting Christian had been but few,
but they had sufficed to light a fatal star in his sky, and to induce
in him, when, as now, he found himself in her vicinity, an attitude
towards the rest of the world that justified his mother's employment
of the verb to "mooch" (a word that may be taken as implying a moody
and furtive aloofness).

There was, Mrs. Mangan was pleased to observe, no mooching about her
daughter. On the launching of the picnic, Tishy had immediately
assumed the lead, with an _aplomb_ and assurance justified by her
family's special intimacy with young Mr. Coppinger, and all who knew
Tishy, knew also that she meant to keep it. Dr. Mangan had not
over-stated the case when, three years earlier, he had said to himself
that she was a right-down handsome girl. Now, at twenty-one and a
half, his paternal pride was well justified. Like him, she was tall
and strongly built, tall, that is to say, for a class that rarely
excels in height, and Tishy's five and a half feet enabled her to look
down on most of her friends. Her broad, dark eyebrows grew straight
and low over brilliant grey eyes, and were nearly reached by thick
upward curled black eyelashes. If her mouth was large, it was
well-shaped, and if her nose did not possess the classic severity of
her brother's, its challenging tilt was not unattractive. To these
charms must be added shining masses of dark hair, and a complexion of
so vivid a tone, that it seemed sometimes as though a fog of carmine
coloured the very atmosphere about her glowing face. She radiated
vitality, the richness and abundance of high summer; she suggested a
darkly gorgeous peacock-butterfly, and in the delicate radiance of the
spring woods, she seemed out of key with their slender elegance of
leaf and spray the soft reticence of their faint greens and greys.

It is indeed hardly fair to expect of Tishy Mangan that she should be
worthy of such a setting as southern I