The party, having opened with lemonade, tea and innumerable cakes, moved on through “a little music,” (contributed exclusively by the Mangan Quartet) to games.  Larry, afflicted by the discovery that he had, during his illness, outgrown his evening clothes, found himself fated to do conspicuous things in the centre of a space, cleared as for a prize-fight, in the Mangan drawing-room.  Problems in connection with a ship that came from China.  Exhausting efforts in guessing absurdities, that usually necessitated withdrawal to the landing outside the door with a giggling schoolgirl, and collaboration with her in a code of complicated signals.  And, blackest feature of all, mistakes in any of these arduous matters entailed “forfeits,” and the process entitled “paying the forfeits,” meant a concentration of attention upon a young gentleman, conscious to agony of the fact that his trousers left his ankle-bones unshielded from the public gaze.

It was sufficiently distressing to lie at full length on the carpet, and declare oneself to be the length of a looby, and the breadth of a booby, but what was that as compared with sitting, blindfolded, on a chair, and guessing, among many kisses, which had been bestowed by “the girl he loved best?” As if he loved any of them!  These pert and blowsy schoolgirls, with hideous voices, and arrogant curls, or crimped lion-manes of aggressive hair!  He, with “his heart set all upon a snowy coif!” (as he chose to wrest Mr. Yeats’ line to his own purposes).

It was singular in how many of these exercises, of which the greater number included kissing, he found himself involved with Tishy Mangan.  Tishy was in a bad temper.  The red-headed medical student had not been honoured with an invitation.  Dr. Mangan had struck his name from the list of guests saying that they had enough without him, and Tishy knew her father too well to protest.  Dr. Mangan was in the habit of saying that he always left all household affairs “in the hands of the ladies.”  He did not add, as he might have done, that these hands lay within his, and that their owners had long since realised that it was advisable to respond to any indication of pressure.  His daughter, however, while she submitted to the inevitable, saw no reason why she should deny herself the solace of sulking, nor of avenging herself of his tyranny on “his fine pet,” as she, in high indignation, described Larry to herself.  Master Coppinger might be a man of property and the owner of Coppinger’s Court, yes, or Dublin Castle, for all she cared!  Pappy might say what he liked, but she wouldn’t be bothered with a boy like that!  And there was Ned Cloherty—­(this was the medical student)—­that she had as good as asked to come—­and what could she say to him now, she wondered?  So Tishy sulked, and resented the Hidden Hand, that so inevitably linked her with the owner of Coppinger’s Court, as much as did that man of property himself.