"A 'strange coincidence,' to use a phrase
By which such things are settled now-a-days."
Byron.
"Here's the comrade of your glove, Miss Dido," said Biddy, descending into the hall, where the three girls, attired in their best summer dresses (being about to set forth for a tennis party at Ballyredmond), were impatiently awaiting her.
"Will I do?" inquired Dido, as she received her property. "Or is my hat too shabby? This is its third summer, you know!"
"An' deed, an' you'll do finely; 'tis only too grand you are! What call is there to be dressing just for the ould gentleman and Miss Calderwood, and maybe Misther Barry, that ye can see any day of the week without putting yourselves to any rounds at all?" demanded Biddy in an acrimonious key.
"Oh, but this is to be quite a grand affair," protested her younger nursling. "We have had three days' invitation. It's my opinion," glancing at her pretty cousin, "that this 'at home' is given for you, Helen. Mr. Redmond has been here twice this week; you have bewitched him."
"I would not put it past him! for nothing grows old with a man but his clothes," cried Biddy scornfully. "And shure he might give something dacent when he went about it; I've no opinion of these grass parties and chape entertainments. God be with the good ould times, when no one was axed to cross the door, under a dinner or a ball; indade, Redmond's own father used to give the height of high feedin' and kep' a butt of claret standing in the hall, just ready to your hand. But now, when you go out, no one even so much as axes, if you have a mouth on you?—for—by a drink of tay, that wake, that ye can see the bottom of the cup!"
Notwithstanding this gloomy sketch, the three young ladies (to whom this "chape entertainment" was a delightful novelty) were not the least disheartened, and set off to walk across the demesne in the highest possible spirits, leaving Biddy and her apple-cheeked niece filling up the doorway, and gazing after them with the affectionate complacency of people who were surveying a creditable personal possession.
"There's not their like in the county!" exclaimed Sally, as she folded her massive arms across her apron strings.