“Yes, Mrs. Few, in the old brown riding-habit. She came up to the table, with a saucy laugh in her face, and said, 'Why, uncle, are you going to give a fancy ball?'
“'It is the last arrival from Paris, miss,' said I; 'the Orleans mantle, which, though not a “costume de Chasse,” is accounted very becoming.'
“'Ah, you 're laughing at my old habit, Miss Busk,' said she, seeing how I eyed her; 'and it really is very shabby, but I intend to give Dan Leary a commission to replace it one of these days.'”
“Dan Leary, of the Cross-roads!” exclaimed Captain Bodkin, laughing.
“I pledge you my word of honor, sir, she said it. 'And as to all this finery, Miss Busk,' said she, turning over the plates with her whip, 'it would be quite unsuitable to our country, our climate, and our habits; not to say, that the Orleans mantle would be worn with an ill grace when our people are going half naked!'”
“Positively indecent! downright indelicate!” shuddered Mrs. Cronan.
“And did Martin agree with her?” asked the Captain.
“I should like to know when he dared to do otherwise. Why, between my lady and the niece he can scarcely call his life his own.”
“They say he has a cruel time of it,” sighed Mr. Clinch, the revenue-officer, who had some personal experience of domestic slavery.
“Tush,—nonsense!” broke in his wife. “I never knew one of those hen-pecked creatures that was n't a tyrant in his family. I 'll engage, if the truth were known, Lady Dorothy has the worst of it.”