"Oh, but if you heerd her play the harp, you'd think she wouldn't lave a sthring on it" (this was Mrs. Riley's favourite bit of praise); "and a beautiful harp it is, one of Egan's double action, all over goold, and cost eighty guineas; Miss Cheese chuse it for her. Do you know Miss Cheese? she's as plump as a partridge, with a voice like a lark; she sings elegant duets. Do you ever sing duets?"
"Not often."
"Ah! if you could hear Pether Dowling sing duets with my daughter! he'd make the hair stand straight on your head with the delight. Oh, he's a powerful singer! you never heerd the like; he runs up and down as fast as a lamplighter;—and the beautiful turns he gives; oh! I never heerd any one sing a second like Pether. I declare he sings a second to that degree that you'd think it was the first, and never at a loss for a shake; and then off he goes in a run that you'd think he'd never come back; but he does bring it back into the tune again with as nate a fit as a Limerick glove. Oh! I never heerd a singer like Pether!!!"
There is no knowing how much more Mrs. Riley would have said about "Pether," if the end of the dance had not cut her eloquence short by permitting the groups of dancers, as they promenaded, to throw in their desultory discourse right and left, and so break up anything like a consecutive conversation.
But let it not be supposed that all Mrs. Flanagan's guests were of the Gubbins and Riley stamp. There were some of the better class of the country people present; intelligence and courtesy in the one sex, and gentleness and natural grace in the other, making a society not to be ridiculed in the mass, though individual instances of folly and ignorance and purse-proud effrontery were amongst it.
But to Growling every phase of society afforded gratification; and while no one had a keener relish for such scenes as the one in which we have just witnessed him, the learned and the courteous could be met with equal weapons by the doctor when he liked.
Quitting the dancing-room, he went into the little drawing-room, where a party of a very different stamp was engaged in conversation. Edward O'Connor and the "dear English captain," as Mrs. Flanagan called him, were deep in an interesting discussion about the relative practices in Ireland and England on the occasions of elections and trials, and most other public events; and O'Connor and two or three listeners—amongst whom was a Mr. Monk, whose daughters, remarkably nice girls, were of the party—were delighted with the feeling tone in which the Englishman spoke of the poorer classes of Irish, and how often the excesses into which they sometimes fell were viewed through an exaggerated or distorted medium, and what was frequently mere exuberance of spirit pronounced and punished as riot.
"I never saw a people over whom those in authority require more good temper," remarked the captain.
"Gentleness goes a long way with them," said Edward.
"And violence never succeeds," added Mr. Monk.