is not a feather to me. Let her take her own way. What care I? If
she's happy, why shouldn't I--why shouldn't I?'

Five minutes after:--

'Who the plague are these fellows in the Phoenix? How the brutes howl
over their liquor!' said Devereux, as he and Puddock, at the door-steps,
awaited Cluffe, who was fixing his buckles in the drawing-room.

'The Corporation of Tailors,' answered Puddock, a little loftily, for he
was not inwardly pleased that the precincts of the 'Phoenix' should be
profaned by their mechanical orgies.

Through the open bow window of the great oak parlour of the inn was
heard the mighty voice of the president, who was now in the thick of his
political toasts.

'Odds bud!' lisped little Puddock, 'what a stentorian voice!'

'Considering it issues from a tailor!' acquiesced Devereux, who thought
he recognised the accents, and hated tailors, who plagued him with long
bills and dangerous menaces.

'May the friends of the Marquis of Kildare be ever blessed with the
tailor's thimble,' declaimed the portentous toast master. 'May the
needle of distress be ever pointed at all mock patriots; and a hot
needle and a burning thread to all sewers of sedition!' and then came an
applauding roar.

'And may you ride into town on your own goose, with a hot needle behind
you, you roaring pigmy!' added Devereux.

'The Irish cooks that can't relish French sauce!' enunciated the same
grand voice, that floated, mellowed, over the field.

'Sauce, indeed!' said Puddock, with an indignant lisp, as Cluffe, having
joined them, they set forward together; 'I saw some of them going in,
Sir, and to look at their vulgar, unthinking countenances, you'd say
they had not capacity to distinguish between the taste of a quail and a
goose; but, by Jove! Sir, they have a dinner. _You're_ a politician,
Cluffe, and read the papers. You remember the bill of fare--don't
you?--at the Lord Mayor's entertainment in London.'

Cluffe, whose mind was full of other matters, nodded his head with a
grunt.

'Well, I'll take my oath,' pursued Puddock, 'you couldn't have made a
better dinner at the Prince of Travendahl's table. Spanish olea, if you
please--ragou royal, cardoons, tendrons, shellfish in marinade, ruffs
and rees, wheat-ears, green morels, fat livers, combs and notts. 'Tis
rather odd, Sir, to us who employ them, to learn that our tailors, while
we're eating the dinners we do--our _tailors_, Sir, are absolutely
gorging themselves wi