"Whisht! you young devils, will you?" cried O'Grady, and a momentary silence prevailed; but the little girl snivelled and put up her bib[14] ] to wipe her eyes, while Goggy put out his tongue at her. Many minutes had not elapsed when the girl again whimpered—
"Call to Goggy, papa; he's putting some mouse's tails into my milk, sir."
"Ah, you dirty little tell-tale!" cried Goggy, reproachfully; "a tell-tale is worse than a mouse's tail."
O'Grady jumped up, gave Master Goggy a box on the ear, and then caught him by the aforesaid appendage to his head, and as he led him to the door by the same, Goggy bellowed lustily, and when ejected from the room howled down the passage more like a dog than a human being. O'Grady, on resuming his seat, told Polshee[15] ] (the little girl) she was always getting Goggy a beating, and she was a little cantankerous cat and a dirty tell-tale, as Goggy said. Amongst the ladies and Furlong the breakfast went forward with coldness and constraint, and all were glad when it was nearly over. At this period, Mrs. O'Grady half filled a large bowl from the tea-urn, and then added to it some weak tea, and Miss O'Grady collected all the broken bread about the table on a plate. Just then Furlong ventured to "twouble" Mrs. O'Grady for a leetle more tea, and before he handed her his cup he would have emptied the sediment in the slop-basin, but by mistake he popped it into the large bowl of miserable Mrs. O'Grady had prepared. Furlong begged a thousand pardons, but Mrs. O'Grady assured him it was of no consequence, as it was only for the tutor!
O'Grady, having swallowed his breakfast as fast as possible, left the room; the whole party soon followed, and on arriving in the drawing-room, the young ladies became more agreeable when no longer under the constraint of their ogre father. Furlong talked slip-slop common-places with them; they spoke of the country and the weather, and he of the city; they assured him that the dews were heavy in the evening, and that the grass was so green in that part of the country; he obliged them with the interesting information, that the Liffy ran through Dublin, but that the two sides of the city communicated by means of bridges—that the houses were built of red brick generally, and that the hall-doors were painted in imitation of mahogany; to which the young ladies responded, "La, how odd!" and added, that in the country people mostly painted their hall-doors green, to match the grass. Furlong admitted the propriety of the proceeding, and said he liked uniformity. The young ladies quite coincided in his opinion, declared they all were so fond of uniformity, and added that one of their carriage horses was blind. Furlong admitted the excellence of the observation, and said, in a very soft voice, that Love was blind also.
"Exactly," said Miss O'Grady, "and that's the reason we call our horse 'Cupid'!"
"How clever!" replied Furlong.
"And the mare that goes in harness with him—she's an ugly creature, to be sure, but we call her 'Venus.'"
"How dwoll!" said Furlong.
"That's for uniformity," said Miss O'Grady.