Chapter XXV. OUR BALL.
All the children and young folk round about us had parents who, if they went into town of a morning, were safe to return at night. Most of them had mothers and aunts who lived at Dalkey all the summer. Only we were happy enough to be so neglected by indifferent parents as to possess a large house at our exclusive disposition four or five entire days and nights of the week. Picture our rare and wild abuse of that freedom, and imagine the envy it inspired in the bosoms of other children, of natures as independent as ours!
"I say," proposed the red-headed chief, "what a capital idea if we had a ball in your house some evening when they're away."
Between my eldest sister and me were two little maids, less of the rascal and less of the saint than either of us. Pauline, the teller of wonderful tales at Lysterby, seized upon the notion with avidity. A ball! our own ball, given by ourselves, and all the vagrant band between the dances refreshed by our ingenious efforts and exploits! It was a grand idea. How we clapped our hands, danced, and stamped our feet in the exuberance of content.
At first Saint Agnes demurred. She, after all, was the head of the house by deputy. Not only was she responsible for our immortal souls, but for our fragile bodies; above all, was she responsible for the state of the larder. It was she who told the servant what to order at the general grocer; she who drew attention to the condition of the cellar, in provision for the horde of Sunday visitors, and the interminable file of eager friends who made a point of inquiring after the health of my parents and their progeny on band nights.
You never understand how extremely popular you are until you are in a position to entertain at a pleasant seaside resort, within easy distance of the metropolis, where a fashionable gathering meets twice a-week to listen to the evening band, and where there are regattas. The most distant acquaintance suddenly remembers that he is your dearest friend. Troops invade your garden; your drawing-room is never empty. Shoals devour the refreshments of your dining-room. At ten o'clock, when you are on the point of barricading your too hospitable doors, men arrive cheerily to bid you the time of day, and claim a whisky-and-soda. I speak of Dublin, naturally, where, as a rule, we begin our afternoon calls at midnight, and where the early awakened lark is safe to find us snoring. Inhabit that same seaside place in winter, and even your dearest friend will forget to remember that he knows you. Irish hospitality is justly famous. There is nothing to match it on the face of the earth. But Irish abuse of hospitality is, perhaps, insufficiently recorded, and there is nothing more speedily forgotten than the unlimited favours of "open house."
My parents kept "open house" with a vengeance, which is the reason to-day that none of us possess the needful sixpence to jingle on the traditional tombstone. It was the reason also that, when our ball came off, we children were in a position to offer our thirty or forty miniature guests flowing bowls of innocuous lemonade by the dozens, ham-sandwiches, boxes of Huntley & Palmer's biscuits, baskets of apples purchased by the hundred by my stepfather from his friend the judge, whose orchards we daily pillaged. There was also claret and soda-water, and even genial port and sherry, for that portion of the community we regarded as "the grown-up,"—Arthur, the red-headed boy, Saint Agnes, Pauline, and a few others of both sexes.
We discovered that my parents designed to sit out a play on a certain evening, which meant that they would never give themselves the trouble to catch the last train, and would sleep in town. Invitations were instantly despatched, Saint Agnes giving her consent reluctantly, but young enough to enjoy the prospect of the escapade. The ball was to open as soon as possible after the seven o'clock tea, for at Dalkey, in those days, all the children dined at two o'clock and sat down at seven to a meal of tea and bread-and-butter, with barmbrack and buttered toast on high holidays.
By eight o'clock the long drawing-room was full. We lit the clusters of tapers round the walls, which were reserved for the pleasures of our elders. The gas flared in every jet of the big chandelier. You might have fancied we were celebrating a Royal birthday, such was the brilliancy of our illuminated ball-room. Arthur had brought down, before tea, bunches of flowers from his father's hothouse, and Saint Agnes was ever a veritable witch in the arrangement of flowers.