“Well, this is half of it, anyhow!” says young Mr. Coppinger, facetiously, with which Mrs. Cassidy, like the Miss Flamboroughs, thought she would have died with laughing.

With the arrival of the youngest Miss Talbot-Lowry, and half the twins, a slight change fell upon Mr. Coppinger’s voluble guests.  A stiffening faint, almost imperceptible, yet electric, enforced the circle round Larry.  Even Mrs. Whelply’s confluent simper, that suggested an incessant dripping from the tap of loving kindness, failed a little.  A young Mr. Coppinger was a simple affair, but a Miss Talbot-Lowry, however young, might want watching.

The youngest Miss Talbot-Lowry was, happily for herself, quite unaware of the estimation in which she was held.  She had, like Larry, that quality of selflessness that is so rare and so infinitely engaging; what was she (she would have thought) that respect should be paid to her?  It was a tenet of her eccentric creed that age was not only honourable but was also pathetic, so, when the picnic at large had begun its leisurely advance through the woods to the promised land, Christian selected the oldest and least promising of the Cluhir matrons for her special attention, and made herself so agreeable to her, that Barty Mangan, “mooching” (as his mother afterwards reproached him) solitary, in the rear of the procession, found himself in the remarkable position of wishing that he were his own great-aunt, Mrs. Cantwell.

Barty Mangan’s opportunities for meeting Christian had been but few, but they had sufficed to light a fatal star in his sky, and to induce in him, when, as now, he found himself in her vicinity, an attitude towards the rest of the world that justified his mother’s employment of the verb to “mooch” (a word that may be taken as implying a moody and furtive aloofness).

There was, Mrs. Mangan was pleased to observe, no mooching about her daughter.  On the launching of the picnic, Tishy had immediately assumed the lead, with an aplomb and assurance justified by her family’s special intimacy with young Mr. Coppinger, and all who knew Tishy, knew also that she meant to keep it.  Dr. Mangan had not over-stated the case when, three years earlier, he had said to himself that she was a right-down handsome girl.  Now, at twenty-one and a half, his paternal pride was well justified.  Like him, she was tall and strongly built, tall, that is to say, for a class that rarely excels in height, and Tishy’s five and a half feet enabled her to look down on most of her friends.  Her broad, dark eyebrows grew straight and low over brilliant grey eyes, and were nearly reached by thick upward curled black eyelashes.  If her mouth was large, it was well-shaped, and if her nose did not possess the classic severity of her brother’s, its challenging tilt was not unattractive.  To these charms must be added shining masses of dark hair, and a complexion of so vivid a tone, that it seemed sometimes as though a fog of carmine coloured the very atmosphere about her glowing face.  She radiated vitality, the richness and abundance of high summer; she suggested a darkly gorgeous peacock-butterfly, and in the delicate radiance of the spring woods, she seemed out of key with their slender elegance of leaf and spray the soft reticence of their faint greens and greys.