coat with blue embroidery on the pockets, collar, and skirts, silk stockings to match, as well as the knot of the tiny scabbard of the semblance of a sword at his side, shoes with silver buckles, and altogether he might have been a full-grown Comte or Vicomte seen through a diminishing glass.  His sister was in a full-hooped dress, with tight long waist, and sleeves reaching to her elbows, the under skirt a pale pink, the upper a deeper rose colour; but stiff as was the attire, she had managed to give it a slight general air of disarrangement, to get her cap a little on one side, a stray curl loose on her forehead, to tear a bit of the dangling lace on her arms, and to splash her robe with a puddle.  He was in air, feature, and complexion a perfect little dark Frenchman.  The contour of her face, still more its rosy glow, were more in accordance with her surname, and so especially were the large deep blue eyes with the long dark lashes and pencilled brows.  And there was a lively restless air about her full of intelligence, as she manoeuvred her brother towards a stone seat, guarded by a couple of cupids reining in sleepy-looking lions in stone, where, under the shade of a lime-tree, her little petticoated brother of two years old was asleep, cradled in the lap of a large, portly, handsome woman, in a dark dress, a white cap and apron, and dark crimson cloak, loosely put back, as it was an August day.  Native costumes were then, as now, always worn by French nurses; but this was not the garb of any province of the kingdom, and was as Irish as the brogue in which she was conversing with the tall fine young man who stood at ease beside her.  He was in a magnificent green and gold livery suit, his hair powdered, and fastened in a queue, the whiteness contrasting with the dark brows, and the eyes and complexion of that fine Irish type that it is the fashion to call Milesian.  He looked proud of his dress, which was viewed in those days as eminently becoming, and did in fact display his well-made figure and limbs to great advantage; but he looked anxiously about, and his first inquiry on coming on the scene in attendance upon the little boy had been —

‘The top of the morning to ye, mother!  And where is Victorine?’

‘Arrah, and what would ye want with Victorine?’ demanded the bonne.  ’Is not the old mother enough for one while, to feast her eyes on her an’ Lanty Callaghan, now he has shed the marmiton’s slough, and come out in old Ireland’s colours, like a butterfly from a palmer?  La Jeunesse, instead of Laurent here, and Laurent there.’

La Pierre and La Jeunesse were the stereotyped names of all pairs of lackeys in French noble houses, and the title was a mark of promotion; but Lanty winced and said, ’Have done with that, mother.  You know that never the pot nor the kettle has blacked my fingers since Master Phelim went to the good fathers’ school with me to carry his books and insinse him with the larning.  ’Tis all one, as his