In after years they became great friends, and he often dined with her after she married and settled in London.

Reverting to Lord Kenmare, the following story, which in another version recently won a railway story competition in some newspaper, really pertains to his son Lord Castlerosse.

On a line in Kerry there is a sharp curve overhanging the sea.  An old woman in a great state of nervous agitation was bundled at the last moment into a first-class compartment.

Lord Castlerosse, the only passenger in the compartment, by way of relieving her obvious agitation, tried to calm her by telling her she could change at the next station.

‘Is it me that can be aisy,’ she replied, ’when it’s my Pat is driving the engine, and him having a dhrop taken, and saying he’ll take us a shpin round the Head?’

After all, to my mind, for sheer humour of a quiet sort, nothing beats the observation of the late Sir John Godfrey, who never got up before one in the day, and invariably breakfasted when his family were having lunch.  Being asked one day to account for this rather inconvenient habit, he replied:—­

‘The fact is, I sleep very slow.’

I commend this to every sluggard who wants an excuse to resume his slumbers when awakened too soon.

There was a gentleman who had rather a red nose, and some one remarked that it was an expensive piece of painting, to which some one else significantly added, that it was not a water-colour.

‘No,’ said Sir John, ‘it was done in distemper.’

One night a landlord in Kerry, who shall be nameless, though he has passed over to the great majority, went to bed without having much knowledge how he got there.

Two of his sons crept to the neighbouring town, unscrewed the sign outside the inn, and put it at the end of their parent’s bed.

When he awoke, he looked at the sign for some time in a bewildered way.  Then he observed aloud:—­

’I thought I went to sleep in my own bed, but I’m d——­d if I have not woke in the middle of the street.’

A certain roystering gentleman named Jack Ray got drunk and fell asleep in the woods of Kilcoleman.  Some of the Godfrey boys, seeing him prostrate and with foam on his lips, ran to summon their father, saying to him:—­

‘There’s a man dead in the wood.’

Sir William hastened to the spot, and having put on his glasses to get a view of the corpse, observed:—­

‘Come away, my boys, this man dies once a week.’

Another Kerry landlord, who was also a baronet, dealt with the National Bank, the local manager of which was an arrant snob, who loved a title, and bored everybody with his pretended intimacy with the impecunious baronet.  But at last even his patience was exhausted, and he sent the squire a pretty stiff letter about the arrears due.

The other received the letter at breakfast, and showed it to his son just come down from a University, who whistled and ejaculated:—­