“And has Tizzy a pony of her own?”

“Oh, yes, Tizzy has everything. She’s papa’s pet, you know.”

“And whose pet are you?” I asked.

“Oh—I am nobody’s pet, unless sometimes Jack makes a pet of me when he’s in a good humour. Do you make pets of your sisters, Mr Green?”

“I have none. But if I had I should not make pets of them.”

“Not of your own sisters?”

“No. As for myself, I’d sooner make a pet of my friend’s sister, a great deal.”

“How very unnatural,” said Miss O’Conor, with the prettiest look of surprise imaginable.

“Not at all unnatural, I think,” said I, looking tenderly and lovingly into her face. Where does one find girls so pretty, so easy, so sweet, so talkative as the Irish girls? And then with all their talking and all their ease who ever hears of their misbehaving? They certainly love flirting as they also love dancing. But they flirt without mischief and without malice.

I had now quite forgotten my misfortune, and was beginning to think how well I should like to have Fanny O’Conor for my wife. In this frame of mind I was bending over towards her as a servant took away a plate from the other side, when a sepulchral note sounded in my ear. It was like the memento mori of the old Roman—as though someone pointed in the midst of my bliss to the sword hung over my head by a thread. It was the voice of Larry, whispering in his agony just above my head:

“They’s disthroying my poor feet intirely, intirely, so they is! I can’t bear it much longer, yer honer.” I had committed murder like Macbeth; and now my Banquo had come to disturb me at my feast.

“What is it he says to you?” asked Fanny.

“Oh, nothing,” I answered, once more in my misery.

“There seems to be some point of confidence between you and our Larry,” she remarked.

“Oh, no,” said I, quite confused; “not at all.”

“You need not be ashamed of it. Half the gentlemen in the county have their confidences with Larry—and some of the ladies too, I can tell you. He was born in this house, and never lived anywhere else; and I am sure he has a larger circle of acquaintances than anyone else in it.”

I could not recover my self-possession for the next ten minutes. Whenever Larry was on our side of the table I was afraid he was coming to me with another agonised whisper. When he was opposite, I could not but watch him as he hobbled in his misery. It was evident that the boots were too tight for him, and had they been made throughout of iron they could not have been less capable of yielding to the feet. I pitied him from the bottom of my heart. And I pitied myself also, wishing that I was well in bed upstairs with some feigned malady, so that Larry might have had his own again.

And then for a moment I missed him from the room. He had doubtless gone to relieve his tortured feet in the servants’ hall, and as he did so was cursing my cruelty. But what mattered it? Let him curse. If he would only stay away and do that, I would appease his wrath when we were alone together with pecuniary satisfaction.