; a gentle walk--I repeat it--is all very well; but these horrid
rough country walks--these _masculine_ walks, I may say--are not
consistent with a delicate frame like mine."

"A delicate frame!" said Murtough. "'Faith, I'll tell you what it is,
Miss Riley," said he, standing bolt upright before her, plunging his
hands into his pockets, and fixing his eyes on her feet, which still
maintained their original position on the fender--"I'll tell you what it
is, Miss Riley; by the _vartue_ of my oath, if your _other_ leg is a
match for the one I see, the _divil_ a harm a trot from this to Dublin
would do you!"

Miss Riley gave a faint scream, and popped her legs under her chair,
while Murphy ran off in a shout of laughter, and joined the party, to
whom he made no secret of his joke.

But all this did not damp Miss Riley's hopes of winning him. She
changed her plan; and seeing he did not bow to what she considered the
supremacy of her very elegant manners, she set about feigning at once
admiration and dread of him. She would sometimes lift her eyes to
Murtough with a languishing expression, and declare she never knew any
one she was so afraid of; but even this double attack on his vanity
could not turn Murphy's flank, and so a very laughable flirtation went
on between them, he letting her employ all the enginery of her sex
against him, with a mischievous enjoyment in her blindness at not
seeing she was throwing away her powder and shot.

But to return to the party; a rattling country dance called out at once
the energies of the piper, the fiddler, and the ladies and gentlemen,
and left those who had more activity in their heads than their heels to
sit on the forms in the background and exercise their tongues in open
scandal of their mutual friends and acquaintances under cover of the
music, which prevented the most vigorous talker from being heard further
than his or her next-door neighbour. Dr. Growling had gone over to Mrs.
Gubbins', as desired, and was buried deep in gossip.

"What an extraordinary affair that was about Miss O'Grady, doctor."

"Very, ma'am."

"In the man's bed she was, I hear."

"So the story goes, ma'am."

"And they tell me, doctor, that when her father, that _immaculate_
madman--God keep us from harm!--said to poor Mrs. O'Grady, in a great
rage, 'Where have you brought up your daughters to go to, ma'am?' said
he; and she, poor woman, said, 'To church, my dear,' thinking it was the
different rel