iles, too. I am not sure,
Charles, whether I ought not to call you out for aspersing the honor of
the family."

"Laugh as you will, Tom--be as incredulous as you please. One fact is
incontestable--the breeches are gone! Look here--I am reduced to my
regimentals; and if these go, to-morrow I must borrow of you!"

Rochefoucault says, there is something in the misfortunes of our very
best friends that does not displease us; assuredly we can, most of us,
laugh at their petty inconveniences, till called upon to supply them.
Tom composed his features on the instant, and replied with more gravity,
as well as with an expletive, which, if my Lord Mayor had been within
hearing might have cost him five shillings.

"There is something very queer in this, after all. The clothes, you say,
have positively disappeared. Somebody is playing you a trick; and, ten
to one, your servant had a hand in it. By the way, I heard something
yesterday of his kicking up a bobbery in the kitchen, and seeing a
ghost, or something of that kind, himself. Depend upon it, Barney is in
the plot."

It now struck the lieutenant at once, that the usually buoyant spirits
of his attendant had of late been materially sobered down, his loquacity
obviously circumscribed, and that he, the said lieutenant, had actually
rung his bell three several times that very morning before he could
procure his attendance. Mr. Maguire was forthwith summoned, and
underwent a close examination. The "bobbery" was easily explained. Mr.
Oliver Dobbs had hinted his disapprobation of a flirtation carrying on
between the gentleman from Munster and the lady from the Rue St. Honore.
Mademoiselle had boxed Mr. Maguire's ears, and Mr. Maguire had pulled
Mademoiselle upon his knee, and the lady had _not_ cried _Mon Dieu_! And
Mr. Oliver Dobbs said it was very wrong; and Mrs. Botherby said it was
"scandalous," and what ought not to be done in any moral kitchen; and
Mr. Maguire had got hold of the Honorable Augustus Sucklethumbkin's
powder-flask, and had put large pinches of the best Double Dartford into
Mr. Dobbs's tobacco-box; and Mr. Dobbs's pipe had exploded, and set fire
to Mrs. Botherby's Sunday cap; and Mr. Maguire had put it out with the
slop-basin, "barring the wig"; and then they were all so "cantankerous,"
that Barney had gone to take a walk in the garden; and then--then Mr.
Barney had seen a ghost.

"A what? you blockhead!" asked Tom Ingoldsby.

"Sure then, and it's meself wil