arving hot work. Mary Jane settled down quietly to her supper but Aunt
Kate and Aunt Julia were still toddling round the table, walking on
each other's heels, getting in each other's way and giving each other
unheeded orders. Mr. Browne begged of them to sit down and eat their
suppers and so did Gabriel but they said there was time enough, so that,
at last, Freddy Malins stood up and, capturing Aunt Kate, plumped her
down on her chair amid general laughter.

When everyone had been well served Gabriel said, smiling:

"Now, if anyone wants a little more of what vulgar people call stuffing
let him or her speak."

A chorus of voices invited him to begin his own supper and Lily came
forward with three potatoes which she had reserved for him.

"Very well," said Gabriel amiably, as he took another preparatory
draught, "kindly forget my existence, ladies and gentlemen, for a few
minutes."

He set to his supper and took no part in the conversation with which the
table covered Lily's removal of the plates. The subject of talk was the
opera company which was then at the Theatre Royal. Mr. Bartell D'Arcy,
the tenor, a dark-complexioned young man with a smart moustache, praised
very highly the leading contralto of the company but Miss Furlong
thought she had a rather vulgar style of production. Freddy Malins said
there was a Negro chieftain singing in the second part of the Gaiety
pantomime who had one of the finest tenor voices he had ever heard.

"Have you heard him?" he asked Mr. Bartell D'Arcy across the table.

"No," answered Mr. Bartell D'Arcy carelessly.

"Because," Freddy Malins explained, "now I'd be curious to hear your
opinion of him. I think he has a grand voice."

"It takes Teddy to find out the really good things," said Mr. Browne
familiarly to the table.

"And why couldn't he have a voice too?" asked Freddy Malins sharply. "Is
it because he's only a black?"

Nobody answered this question and Mary Jane led the table back to the
legitimate opera. One of her pupils had given her a pass for Mignon.
Of course it was very fine, she said, but it made her think of poor
Georgina Burns. Mr. Browne could go back farther still, to the old
Italian companies that used to come to Dublin--Tietjens, Ilma de Murzka,
Campanini, the great Trebelli, Giuglini, Ravelli, Aramburo. Those were
the days, he said, when there was something like singing to be heard in
Dublin. He told too of how the top gallery of the old Royal used to