Old Mrs. Cantwell, although unpromising of aspect, was by no means as deplorable, socially, as Christian had assumed her to be.  The fact that she was the untrammelled owner of a soundly-invested fifteen thousand pounds, that she was the aunt whom Dr. Mangan delighted to honour, combined with the allied fact that she had paid for the hiring of the picnic-bearing wagonette, gave her an importance that could be undervalued only by one as ignorant of the greater concerns of life as was Christian.  Mrs. Cantwell accepted the companionship of the youngest Miss Talbot-Lowry as no more than her due, and the thought that compassion had prompted its bestowal, was very far from her mind.  None the less, the Noah’s Ark principles that governed implicitly, if not ostensibly Cluhir entertainments of this nature, were firmly embedded in her being, and she was entirely aware of the furtive presence of Barty, at the rear of the procession of which she and Christian formed the last couple.

“Now, my dear,” she observed, while she and Christian paced side by side, along the river path, “you shouldn’t be wasting time on an old woman like me!  When I was young, we’d have called this a Two and Two party, and I promise you that the likes o’ you and me wouldn’t have been reckoned a proper couple at all!  Not when I was a girl!”

“I should have said that you and I were irreproachably proper, Mrs. Cantwell,” responded Christian, gaily; “it isn’t very kind of you to say that we aren’t behaving as we should!” She laughed into Mrs. Cantwell’s old face, and she, being quite unused to girls who took the trouble to flirt with her, began to think that Frankie Mangan (thus she designated her nephew, the doctor) was right when he said that the youngest of the Talbot-Lowrys was the best of the bunch.

“Ho!  Ho!  Ho!” she said, with a laugh like the whinny of an old horse; “it’s a long time since I kicked my heels over anything higher than a hearth-rug!  But I can tell you, my dear, I was a good warrant for a play-boy when I was your age!  There wasn’t a young girl, no, nor a young man either, that I couldn’t dance down if I gave my mind to it!”

Christian’s response was satisfactory, and Mrs. Cantwell, moved to give a sample of her bygone prowess, executed a hippopotamus-like hop and shuffle among the rustling, orange beech leaves of last year.

“Polkas and Mazoorkas!” she exclaimed.  “Them was all the go in my time!  Come on here, Barty, ye omadhaun!  I believe I could dance you off those long legs of yours this minute, if I was to give me mind to it!”

Barty, thus adjured by his great-aunt, drew near.  Mrs. Cantwell was not a person to be lightly disobeyed, but his dark eyes were full of apprehension.  What might Aunt Bessie not say!  She was incalculable, terrible.

There are old people who appear to find an indemnity for their lost youth in permitting to themselves, in dealing with later generations, a scarifying freedom of humour in connection with subjects which once they held sacred (for there are few souls that have not at some time enshrined a tender emotion).