, to
ballast me, as you pretty clearly hinted; and all 's in the city to-day
like a loaf with bad yeast, thick as lead, and sour to boot. And a howl
and growl coming off the wilds of Old Ireland! We're smitten to-day in
our hearts and our pockets, and it 's a question where we ought to feel
it most, for the sake of our families.'

'Do you not observe that your cousins are not eating?' said his
wife, adding, to Patrick: 'I entertain the opinion that a sound
breakfast-appetite testifies to the proper vigour of men.'

'Better than a doctor's pass: and to their habits likewise,' Captain Con
winked at his guests, begging them to steal ten minutes out of the fray
for the inward fortification of them.

Eggs in the shell, and masses of eggs, bacon delicately thin and curling
like Apollo's locks at his temples, and cutlets, caviar, anchovies in
the state of oil, were pressed with the captain's fervid illustrations
upon the brothers, both meditatively nibbling toast and indifferent to
the similes he drew and applied to life from the little fish which had
their sharpness corrected but not cancelled by the improved liquid they
swam in. 'Like an Irishman in clover,' he said to his wife to pay her a
compliment and coax an acknowledgement: 'just the flavour of the salt of
him.'

Her mind was on her brother Edward, and she could not look sweet-oily,
as her husband wooed her to do, with impulse to act the thing he was
imagining.

'And there is to-morrow's dinner-party to the Mattocks: I cannot travel
to Earlsfont,' she said.

'Patrick is a disengaged young verderer, and knows the route, and has a
welcome face there, and he might go, if you're for having it performed
by word of mouth. But, trust me, my dear, bad news is best communicated
by telegraph, which gives us no stupid articles and particles to quarrel
with. "Boy born Vienna doctor smiling nurse laughing." That tells it
all, straight to the understanding, without any sickly circumlocutory
stuff; and there's nothing more offensive to us when we're hurt at
intelligence. For the same reason, Colonel Arthur couldn't go, since
you'll want him to meet the Mattocks?'

Captain Con's underlip shone with a roguish thinness.

'Arthur must be here,' said Mrs. Adister. 'I cannot bring myself to
write it. I disapprove of telegrams.'

She was asking to be assisted, so her husband said:

'Take Patrick for a secretary. Dictate. He has a bold free hand and'll
supply all the fiorituri a