and there
is a matchless grace in the way they wear the 'whatever,' be it the
chiffons of the fashionable dame, or the shawl of the country colleen,
who can draw the two corners of that faded article of apparel shyly over
her lips and look out from under it with a pair of luminous grey eyes in
a manner that is fairly 'disthractin'.'

Yesterday was a red-letter day, for I dined in the evening at Dublin
Castle, and Francesca was bidden to the concert in the Throne Room
afterwards. It was a brilliant scene when the assembled guests awaited
their host and hostess, the shaded lights bringing out the satins and
velvets, pearls and diamonds, uniforms, orders, and medals. Suddenly
the hum of voices ceased as one of the aides-de-camp who preceded the
vice-regal party announced 'their Excellencies.' We made a sort of
passage as these dignitaries advanced to shake hands with a few of those
they knew best. The Lord Lieutenant then gave his arm to the lady of
highest rank (alas, it was not I!); her Excellency chose her proper
squire, and we passed through the beautifully decorated rooms to St.
Patrick's Hall in a nicely graded procession, magnificence at the head,
humility at the tail. A string band was discoursing sweet music the
while, and I fitted to its measures certain well-known lines descriptive
of the entrance of the beasts into the ark.

'The animals went in two by two,
The elephant and the kangaroo.'

As my escort was a certain brilliant lord justice, and as the wittiest
dean in Leinster was my other neighbour, I almost forgot to eat in my
pleasure and excitement. I told the dean that we had chosen Scottish
ancestors before going to our first great dinner in Edinburgh, feeling
that we should be more in sympathy with the festivities and more
acceptable to our hostess, but that I had forgotten to provide myself
for this occasion, my first function in Dublin; whereupon the good dean
promptly remembered that there was a Penelope O'Connor, daughter of the
King of Connaught. I could not quite give up Tam o' the Cowgate (Thomas
Hamilton) or Jenny Geddes of fauld-stule fame, also a Hamilton, but I
added the King of Connaught to the list of my chosen forebears with much
delight, in spite of the polite protests of the Rev. Father O'Hogan, who
sat opposite, and who remarked that

'Man for his glory
To ancestry flies,
But woman's bright story
Is told in her eyes.
While the monarch but