“I vote for a picnic,” cried Mrs. White, “and Mr. Cashel shall cook us his dinde à la Mexicaine.”
“An excellent thought,” said several of the younger part of the company.
“A very bad one, in my notion,” said Lord Kilgoff, who had no fancy for seeing her Ladyship scaling cliffs, and descending steep paths, when his own frail limbs did not permit of accompanying her. “Picnics are about as vulgar a pastime as one can imagine. Your dinner is ever a failure; your wine detestable; your table equipage arrives smashed or topsy-turvy—” “Unde topsy-turvy?—unde, topsy-turvy, Softly?” said the Dean, turning fiercely on the curate. “Whence topsyturvy? Do you give it up? Do you, Mr. Attorney? Do you, my Lord? do you give it up, eh? I thought so! Topsy-turvy, quasi, top side t' other way.”
“It's vera ingenious,” said Sir Andrew; “but I maun say I see no neecessity to be always looking back to whare a word gat his birth, parentage, or eddication.”
“It suggests unpleasant associations,” said Lord Kilgoff, looking maliciously towards Linton, who was playing too agreeable to her Ladyship. “The etymology is the key to the true meaning. Sir, many of those expressions popularly termed bulls—”
“Oh, apropos of bulls,” said Mr. Meek, in his sweetest accent, “did you hear of a very singular outrage committed yesterday upon the Lord Lieutenant's beautiful Swiss bull?”
“Did the Dean pass an hour with him?” whispered Linton to Lady Janet, who hated the dignitary.
“It must have been done by mesmerism, I fancy,” rejoined Mr. Meek. “The animal, a most fierce one, was discovered lying in his paddock, so perfectly fettered, head, horns, and feet, that he could not stir. There is every reason to connect the outrage with a political meaning; for in this morning's paper, 'The Green Isle,' there is a letter from Mr. O'Bleather, with a most significant allusion to the occurrence. 'The time is not distant,' says he, 'when John Bull,'—mark the phrase,—'tied, fettered, and trammelled, shall lie prostrate at the feet of the once victim of his tyranny.'”
“The sedition is most completely proven by the significance of the act,” cried out the Chief Justice.
“We have, consequently, offered a reward for the discovery of the perpetrators of this insolent offence, alike a crime against property, as an act subversive of the respectful feeling due to the representative of the sovereign.”