to a rowing match. Sparks listened to all around him, and Mrs.
Dalrymple mixed a very little weak punch, which Dr. Lucas had recommended
to her to take the last thing at night,--_Noctes coenoeque_ etc. Say
what you will, these were very jovial little _reunions_. The girls were
decidedly very pretty. We were in high favor; and when we took leave at the
door, with a very cordial shake hands, it was with no _arriere pensee_ we
promised to see them in the morning.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE ENTANGLEMENT.

When we think for a moment over all the toils, all the anxieties, all the
fevered excitement of a _grande passion_, it is not a little singular that
love should so frequently be elicited by a state of mere idleness; and yet
nothing, after all, is so predisposing a cause as this. Where is the man
between eighteen and eight-and-thirty--might I not say forty--who,
without any very pressing duns, and having no taste for strong liquor and
_rouge-et-noir_, can possibly lounge through the long hours of his day
without at least fancying himself in love? The thousand little occupations
it suggests become a necessity of existence; its very worries are like the
wholesome opposition that purifies and strengthens the frame of a free
state. Then, what is there half so sweet as the reflective flattery which
results from our appreciation of an object who in return deems us the _ne
plus ultra_ of perfection? There it is, in fact; that confounded bump of
self-esteem does it all, and has more imprudent matches to answer for than
all the occipital protuberances that ever scared poor Harriet Martineau.

Now, to apply my moralizing. I very soon, to use the mess phrase, got
"devilish spooney" about the "Dals." The morning drill, the riding-school,
and the parade were all most fervently consigned to a certain military
character that shall be nameless, as detaining me from some appointment
made the evening before; for as I supped there each night, a party of one
kind or another was always planned for the day following. Sometimes we had
a boating excursion to Cove, sometimes a picnic at Foaty; now a rowing
party to Glanmire, or a ride, at which I furnished the cavalry. These
doings were all under my especial direction, and I thus became speedily
the organ of the Dalrymple family; and the simple phrase, "It was Mr.
O'Malley's arrangement," "Mr. O'Malley wished it," was like the _Moi le
roi_ of Louis XIV.

Though all this while we continued to ca