fore it is ready for the reception of
particular patterns and dyes.

Lady Mabel and Lord Mallow had a longish chat in the deep-set window
where Vixen watched for Rorie on his twenty-first birthday. The
conversation came round to Irish politics somehow, and Lord Mallow was
enraptured at discovering that Lady Mabel had read his speeches, or had
heard them read. He had met many young ladies who professed to be
interested in his Irish politics; but never before had he encountered
one who seemed to know what she was talking about. Lord Mallow was
enchanted. He had found his host's lively step-daughter stonily
indifferent to the Hibernian cause. She had said "Poor things" once or
twice, when he dilated on the wrongs of an oppressed people; but her
ideas upon all Hibernian subjects were narrow. She seemed to imagine
Ireland a vast expanse of bog chiefly inhabited by pigs.

"There are mountains, are there not?" she remarked once; "and tourists
go there? But people don't live there, do they?'

"My dear Miss Tempest, there are charming country seats; if you were to
see the outskirts of Waterford, or the hills above Cork, you would find
almost as many fine mansions as in England."

"Really?" exclaimed Vixen, with most bewitching incredulity; "but
people don't live in them? Now I'm sure you cannot tell me honestly
that anyone lives in Ireland. You, for instance, you talk most
enthusiastically about your beautiful country, but you don't live in
it."

"I go there every year for the fishing."

"Yes; but gentlemen will go to the most uncomfortable places for
fishing--Norway, for example. You go to Ireland just as you go to
Norway."

"I admit that the fishing in Connemara is rather remote from
civilisation----"

"Of course. It is at the other end of everything. And then you go into
the House of Commons, and rave about Ireland, just as if you loved her
as I love the Forest, where I hope to live and die. I think all this
wild enthusiasm about Ireland is the silliest thing in the world when
it comes from the lips of landowners who won't pay their beloved
country the compliment of six months' residence out of the twelve."

After this Lord Mallow gave up all hope of sympathy from Miss Tempest.
What could be expected from a young lady who could not understand
patriotism in the abstract, but wanted to pin a man down for life to
the spot of ground for which his soul burned with the ardour of an
orator and a poet? Imagine Tom Moore c