O never forget that old Ireland is weeping
The bitter salt tears of the mother bereft!

He hummed the spontaneous lines. He was accused of singing to himself,
and a song was vigorously demanded of him by the ladies.

He shook his head. 'I can't,' he sighed. 'I was plucking the drowned
body of a song out of the waters to give it decent burial. And if I sing
I shall be charged with casting a firebrand at Mr. Rockney.'

Rockney assured him that he could listen to anything in verse.

'Observe the sneer:--for our verses are smoke,' said Con.

Miss Mattock pressed him to sing.

But he had saddened his mind about old Ireland: the Irish news weighed
heavily on him, unrelieved by a tussle with Rockney. If he sang, it
would be an Irish song, and he would break down in it, he said; and he
hinted at an objection of his wife's to spirited Irish songs of the sort
which carry the sons of Erin bounding over the fences of tyranny and the
brook of tears. And perhaps Mr. Rockney might hear a tale in verse as
hard to bear as he sometimes found Irish prose!--Miss Mattock perceived
that his depression was genuine, not less than his desire to please her.
'Then it shall be on another occasion,' she said.

'Oh! on another occasion I'm the lark to the sky, my dear lady.'

Her carriage was announced. She gave Patrick a look, with a smile, for
it was to be a curious experiment. He put on the proper gravity of a
young man commissioned, without a dimple of a smile. Philip bowed to her
stiffly, as we bow to a commanding officer who has insulted us and will
hear of it. But for that, Con would have manoeuvred against his wife
to send him downstairs at the lady's heels. The fellow was a perfect
riddle, hard to read as the zebra lines on the skin of a wild
jackass--if Providence intended any meaning when she traced them! and
it's a moot point: as it is whether some of our poets have meaning
and are not composers of zebra. 'No one knows but them above!' he said
aloud, apparently to his wife.

'What can you be signifying?' she asked him. She had deputed Colonel
Arthur to conduct Miss Mattock and Miss Barrow to their carriage, and
she supposed the sentence might have a mysterious reference to the plan
she had formed; therefore it might be a punishable offence. Her small
round eyes were wide-open, her head was up and high.

She was easily appeased, too easily.

'The question of rain, madam,' he replied to her repetition of his
word