not sent to the station for me, and it was pelting rain, so I had to drive seven miles in a thing that only exists south of the Limerick Junction, and is called a “jingle”.  A jingle is a square box of painted canvas with no back to it, because, as was luminously explained to me, you must have some way to get into it, and I had to sit sideways in it, with my portmanteau bucking like a three-year-old on the seat opposite to me.  It fell out on the road twice going uphill.  After the second fall my hair tonic slowly oozed forth from the seams, and added a fresh ingredient to the smells of the grimy cushions and the damp hay that furnished the machine.  My hair tonic costs eight-and-sixpence a bottle.

There is probably not in the United Kingdom a worse-planned entrance gate than Robert Trinder’s.  You come at it obliquely on the side of a crooked hill, squeeze between its low pillars with an inch to spare each side, and immediately drop down a yet steeper hill, which lasts for the best part of a quarter of a mile.  The jingle went swooping and jerking down into the unknown, till, through the portholes on either side of the driver’s legs, I saw Lisangle House.  It had looked decidedly better in large red letters at the top of old Robert’s notepaper than it did at the top of his lawn, being no more than a square yellow box of a house, that had been made a fool of by being promiscuously trimmed with battlements.  Just as my jingle tilted me in backwards against the flight of steps, I heard through the open door a loud and piercing yell; following on it came the thunder of many feet, and the next instant a hound bolted down the steps with a large plucked turkey in its mouth.  Close in its wake fled a brace of puppies, and behind them, variously armed, pursued what appeared to be the staff of Lisangle House.  They went past me in full cry, leaving a general impression of dirty aprons, flying hair, and onions, and I feel sure that there were bare feet somewhere in it.  My carman leaped from his perch and joined in the chase, and the whole party swept from my astonished gaze round or into a clump of bushes.  At this juncture I was not sorry to hear Robert Trinder’s voice greeting me as if nothing unusual were occurring.

[Illustration:  ROBERT’S AUNT]

“Upon me honour, it’s the Captain!  You’re welcome, sir, you’re welcome!  Come in, come in, don’t mind the horse at all; he’ll eat the grass there as he’s done many a time before!  When the gerr’ls have old Amazon cot they’ll bring in your things.”

(Perhaps I ought to mention at once that Mr. Trinder belongs to the class who are known in Ireland as “Half-sirs”.  You couldn’t say he was a gentleman, and he himself wouldn’t have tried to say so.  But, as a matter of fact, I have seen worse imitations.)