ed Corrigan, who, scarcely able to control
himself, now walked the room in great agitation.

"You were talking so loud," said Mary, "that I guessed you were
quarrelling about politics, and so I came to make peace."

"We were not, Mary; but Tiernay is in one of his wrong-head humors."

"And your grandfather in the silliest of his foolish ones!" exclaimed
Tiernay, as, snatching up his hat he left the cottage.

CHAPTER XIX. A TETE-A-TETE INTERRUPTED

Like battle-tramps
The chaos of their tongues did drown reflection.

Oswald.

It might be thought that in a household so full of contrarieties
as Tubbermore, any new plan of pleasure would have met but a meagre
success. Here, were the Kilgoffs, upon one side, full of some secret
importance, and already speaking of the uncertainty of passing the
spring in Ireland. There, were the Kennyfecks, utterly disorganized by
intestine troubles,--mother, aunt, and daughters at open war, and only
of one mind for some few minutes of each day, when they assailed the
luckless Kennyfeck as the "author of all evil;" Frobisher, discontented
that no handicap could be "got up," to remunerate him for the weariness
of his exile; Upton, suffering under the pangs of rejection; Sir Andrew,
reduced to a skeleton by the treatment against his unhappy opiate,
being condemned, as "Jim" phrased it, to "two heavy sweats without
body-clothes, and a drench every day;" Meek, grown peevish at the little
prospect of making anything of Cashel politically; and Cashel himself,
hipped and bored by all in turn, and wearied of being the head of a
house where the only pleasantry existed in the servants' hall,--and they
were all rogues and thieves who made it.

It might be easily supposed these were not the ingredients which would
amalgamate into any agreeable union, and that even a suggestion to that
end would meet but few supporters.

Not so; the very thought of doing "anything" was a relief: each felt,
perhaps, his share of shame at the general _ennui_, and longed for
whatever gave a chance of repelling it. It was as in certain political
conditions in seasons of general stagnation,--men are willing even
to risk a revolution rather than continue in a state of unpromising
monotony.

Linton, whose own plans required that the others should be full of
occupation of one kind or other, was the first to give the impulse, by
reminding Miss Meek that her sovereignty had, up to this time, been a