J. B.”
Miss Casey’s joy knew no bounds. The Beamishes of Cork, one of the oldest families in Ireland—such a charming addition to the party. She would order round the brougham, and drive over to dear Mrs. Colonel Bowdler’s at once to thank her for such a signal mark of kindness; as for the colonel, she could have hugged the gallant veteran from sheer gratitude.
She did not know that the Bowdlers wished to shelve the hungry major and his daughter in a polite way, and provide them with a sumptuous repast at the expense of Mickey Casey. Not she, indeed; so she stepped into her carriage, and having driven, first, round to the caterer’s to order reinforcements, proceeded to Stephen’s Green, where she was received by Mrs. Bowdler in a small, dingy front room minus a fire, although it was late in December and bitterly raw and cold.
Mrs. Bowdler kissed her, and gushed over her, and begged to be excused for hurrying her away for the tyrant post, as she was compelled to finish a letter to her dearest friend, the wife of the governor-general of India. Miss Casey cut short her stay, as in duty bound, and Mrs. Bowdler ascended to the drawing-room, where three or four visitors were assembled around a fairly decent fire—one of the ladies, during the temporary absence of the hostess, having surreptitiously stirred it up—to whom she imparted the intelligence that she had just parted from the governess to Mrs. Geoffrey Ponsonby, whom that aristocratic personage had sent over in the Ponsonby brougham with a request that she and the colonel would dine in Fitzwilliam Place upon that day, whereat the visitors declared that Mrs. Geoffrey Ponsonby was evidently very desirous of Mrs. Bowdler’s company, and that it was a very remarkable instance of her esteem and regard.
At 6.30, military time, the company arrived, and were ushered into Mickey Casey’s study in order to uncloak. Major Beamish wore a short brown wig on the top of a very high, a very bald, and very shiny head. His eyes were small and watery, and his moustache, greased with a cheap ointment, lay like a solid cushion of hair beneath a nose with nostrils as expansive as those of a rocking-horse. He was attired in a faded suit of evening clothes, his shirt-bosom bearing the indelible imprint not only of the hand of Time, but of the hand of a reckless laundress, who hesitated not to use her nails upon the sierras of its coy and threadbare folds.
Miss Beamish was a gushing maiden of twenty anything, possessed of a profusion of frizzly fair hair, done in a simple and childlike fashion, and bound by a fillet of blue ribbon over a vast expanse of forehead. Her eyes were greenish gray, and not quite free from a suspicion of a squint. Her nose resembled that of her sire, and her mouth was almost concealed by her thin and bloodless lips. Her gaunt frame was enveloped in a gauzy substance over a pink silk, which betrayed the recent presence of the smoothing-iron. Bog-oak ornaments rattled around her neck, at her ears, and upon her lean and sinewy arms.
“Colonel an’ Missis Bowhowdler,” roared Fogarty, as the guests entered the drawing-room. “Major an’ Missis Baymish.”
“Miss, fellow, Miss,” impatiently cried the major.
“Miss Baymish, I mane,” adding in an undertone: “It’s not but she’s ould enough and tough enough for to be a missis tin times over.”
“This is so good of you,” said Matilda, shaking hands all round, “and so good of dear Mrs. Bowdler to give us the pleasure of having you.”