hing she sang as an encore!
And that final yell of 'Asthore'! at least an octave below her voice!
I could only think of the bellow of the cow that jumped over the
moon!"

"What made _me_ indignant," said Mrs. St. George, in emulous
depreciation, ignoring this flight of fancy, "was their not having
'God save the King'! A cowardly concession to the Gaelic League, of
course! I really think that Georgy, who is in the Navy, might have
insisted upon it!"

"They did discuss it," said Frederica, forced by her friend into the
position of devil's advocate, "but they were afraid of the sixpenny
seats. The Mangans said that there would inevitably be rows. They have
had to give up having it at anything now."

This was unanswerable, and Mrs. St. George tacitly accepted defeat.

"I believe that young Mangan is simply a _Rebel_" resumed Mrs.
Kirby, portentously. "Bill thinks he'll go too far some day, and the
police will _have_ to take notice of him. But with the Government
yielding and pandering--"

Here, at least, was a subject on which all three disputants were in
complete agreement. Wolfe Tone or Robert Emmet could hardly have
abhorred the Government of England more heartily than did these three
respectable, law-abiding, unalterably-Unionist ladies, and for some
time the more recent enormities of the rule upon which they
theoretically bestowed their unshakable, allegiance, took precedence
of Miss Mangan as a subjct of disapproval.

"Nevertheless," summed up Mrs. St. George gloomily at the end of a
sweeping condemnation, "we must submit. We can do nothing. As Courtney
says, _we_ can't cut off cows' tails and shoot our tenants for
not paying their rent! _He_ says--"

Colonel St. George's further views were lost in the entrance of the
lawn tennis players, rain-sprinkled, heated, bringing with them a
lively aroma of trodden grass and wet flannel, and convinced of their
superiority to those who had sought shelter, and were now (to quote
Miss Talbot-Lowry) soddenly eating all the hot cakes. Judith had
recently returned from one of her forays, and had not spared her
family her views on the _rapprochement_ with the musical world of
Cluhir that the concert had involved. She was now seated with Bill
Kirby on a secluded sofa in a corner of the long drawing-room, and was
entertaining that deeply-enamoured young man with her accustomed
fluency.

Mr. Kirby, having petted and patronised Judith in her youth, when he
was still nine year