atching. Tell her
so."

Leaving these laconic observations and directions behind him, he set
off to the neighbouring town to meet Scatterbrain, and to make a
blow-up at the post-office about the missing letters. This he was the
more anxious to do, as the post-office was kept by the brother of
M'Garry, the apothecary; and since O'Grady had been made to pay so
dearly for thrashing him, he swore eternal vengeance against the whole
family. The post-master could give no satisfactory answer to the charge
made against him, and O'Grady threatened a complaint to headquarters,
and prophesied the postmaster's dismissal. Satisfied for the present
with this piece of prospective vengeance, he proceeded to the inn, and
awaited the arrival of his guest.

In the interim, at the Hall, Mrs. O'Grady gave Augusta the necessary
hints, and recommended a short walk to improve her colour; and it was
in the execution of this order that Miss O'Grady's perambulation was
cut short by the pelting her sweet brothers gave her.

The internal bustle of the establishment caught the attention of the
dowager, who contrived to become acquainted with its cause, and set
about making herself as fascinating as possible; for though, in the
ordinary routine of the family affairs, she kept herself generally
secluded in her own apartments, whenever any affair of an interesting
nature was pending, nothing could make her refrain from joining any
company which might be in the house;--nothing;--not even O'Grady
himself. At such times, too, she became strangely excited, and
invariably executed one piece of farcical absurdity, of which, however,
the family contrived to confine the exercise to her own room. It was
wearing on her head a tin concern, something like a chimney-cowl,
ornamented by a small weathercock, after the fashion of those which
surmount church-steeples; this, she declared, influenced her health
wonderfully, by indicating the variation of the wind in her stomach,
which she maintained to be the grand ruling principle of human
existence. She would have worn this head-dress in any company, had she
been permitted, but the terrors of her son had sufficient influence over
her to have this laid aside for a more seemly _coiffure_ when she
appeared at dinner or in the drawing-room; but while she yielded really
through fear, she affected to be influenced through tenderness to her
son's infirmity of temper.

"It is very absurd," she would say, "that Gustavus sh