ngements for a
party to the "Dargle," or "Dunleary;" and thus went on the entire party,
the young ladies darting an occasion slight at their elders, who
certainly returned the fire, often with advantage; all uniting now and
then, however, in one common cause, an attack of the whole line upon Mrs.
Clanfrizzle herself, for the beef, or the mutton, or the fish, or the
poultry--each of which was sure to find some sturdy defamer, ready and
willing to give evidence in dispraise. Yet even these, and I thought
them rather dangerous sallies, led to no more violent results than
dignified replies from the worthy hostess, upon the goodness of her fare,
and the evident satisfaction it afforded while being eaten, if the
appetites of the party were a test. While this was at its height, Tom
stooped behind my chair, and whispered gently--

"This is good--isn't it, eh?--life in a boarding-house--quite new to you;
but they are civilized now compared to what you'll find them in the
drawing-room. When short whist for five-penny points sets in--then Greek
meets Greek, and we'll have it."

During all this melee tournament, I perceived that the worthy jib as
he would be called in the parlance of Trinity, Mr. Cudmore, remained
perfectly silent, and apparently terrified. The noise, the din of
voices, and the laughing, so completely addled him, that he was like one
in a very horrid dream. The attention with which I had observed him,
having been remarked by my friend O'Flaherty, he informed me that the
scholar, as he was called there, was then under a kind of cloud--an
adventure which occurred only two nights before, being too fresh in his
memory to permit him enjoying himself even to the limited extent it had
been his wont to do. As illustrative, not only of Mr. Cudmore, but the
life I have been speaking of, I may as well relate it.

Soon after Mr. Cudmore's enlistment under the banners of the
Clanfrizzle, he had sought and found an asylum in the drawing-room of the
establishment, which promised, from its geographical relations, to expose
him less to the molestations of conversation than most other parts of the
room. This was a small recess beside the fire-place, not uncommon in
old-fashioned houses, and which, from its incapacity to hold more than
one, secured to the worthy recluse the privacy he longed for; and here,
among superannuated hearth-brushes, an old hand screen, an asthmatic
bellows, and a kettle-holder, sat the timid youth,