“Are you going to leave him in his toils?” said Miss Kennyfeck.
“Oh, certainly,” replied Cashel, laughing; “I commit the pleasant office of liberating him to other hands.” And so saying, he carelessly mounted his horse, while they pressed him with a hundred questions and inquiries about the late combat.
“I shall be amused to hear the reports that will be current to-morrow,” said Miss Kennyfeck, “about this affair. I 'm certain the truth will be the last to ooze out. My groom says that the creature belongs to the Lord Lieutenant, and if so, there will be no end to the stories.”
Cashel did not seem as much impressed as the sisters expected at this announcement, nor at all aware that he had been constructively affronting the Vice-Majesty of the land, and so he chatted away in pleasant indifference while they continued their ride towards home.
CHAPTER X. THE COMING DINNER-PARTY DISCUSSED
How kindness all its spirit lends,
When we discuss our dearest friends,
Not meanly faults and follies hiding,
But frankly owning each backsliding,
Confessing with polite compassion,
“They 're very bad, but still the fashion.”
The Mode.
The Kennyfecks were without strangers that day, and Cashel, who was now, as it were by unanimous election, received into the bosom of the family, enjoyed for the first time in his life a peep into the science of dinner-giving, in the discussions occasioned by the approaching banquet.
No sooner were they assembled around the drawing-room fire, than Mrs. Kennyfeck, whose whole soul was occupied by the one event, took occasion, as it were by pure accident, to remember that they “were to have some people to-morrow.” Now, the easy nonchalance of the reminiscence and the shortness of the invitation would seem to imply that it was merely one of those slight deviations from daily routine which adds two or three guests to the family table; and so, indeed, did it impress Cashel, who little knew that the dinner in question had been devised, planned, and arranged full three weeks before, and the company packed with a degree of care and selection that evinced all the importance of the event.
Time was when the Irish capital enjoyed, and justly, the highest reputation for all that constitutes social success; when around the dinner-tables of the city were met men of the highest order of intelligence, men pleased to exercise, without effort or display, all the charm of wit and eloquence, and to make society a brilliant reunion of those gifts which, in the wider sphere of active life, won fame and honors.