as ever kept a lady from wetting.  Tut, tut! cries Le Fecondateur, tripping in, my friend Monsieur Moore, that most accomplished traveller (I have just cracked a half bottle avec Lui in a circle of the best wits of the town), is my authority that in Cape Horn, Ventre BICHE, they have a rain that will wet through any, even the stoutest cloak.  A drenching of that violence, he tells me, Sans blague, has sent more than one luckless fellow in good earnest posthaste to another world.  Pooh!  A livre! cries Monsieur Lynch.  The clumsy things are dear at a sou.  One umbrella, were it no bigger than a fairy mushroom, is worth ten such stopgaps.  No woman of any wit would wear one.  My dear Kitty told me today that she would dance in a deluge before ever she would starve in such an ark of salvation for, as she reminded me (blushing piquantly and whispering in my ear though there was none to snap her words but giddy butterflies), dame Nature, by the divine blessing, has implanted it in our hearts and it has become a household word that IL Y A DEUX CHOSES for which the innocence of our original garb, in other circumstances a breach of the proprieties, is the fittest, nay, the only garment.  The first, said she (and here my pretty philosopher, as I handed her to her tilbury, to fix my attention, gently tipped with her tongue the outer chamber of my ear), the first is a bath ...  But at this point a bell tinkling in the hall cut short a discourse which promised so bravely for the enrichment of our store of knowledge.

Amid the general vacant hilarity of the assembly a bell rang and, while all were conjecturing what might be the cause, Miss Callan entered and, having spoken a few words in a low tone to young Mr Dixon, retired with a profound bow to the company.  The presence even for a moment among a party of debauchees of a woman endued with every quality of modesty and not less severe than beautiful refrained the humourous sallies even of the most licentious but her departure was the signal for an outbreak of ribaldry.  Strike me silly, said Costello, a low fellow who was fuddled.  A monstrous fine bit of cowflesh!  I’ll be sworn she has rendezvoused you.  What, you dog?  Have you a way with them?  Gad’s bud, immensely so, said Mr Lynch.  The bedside manner it is that they use in the Mater hospice.  Demme, does not Doctor O’Gargle chuck the nuns there under the chin.  As I look to be saved I had it from my Kitty who has been wardmaid there any time these seven months.  Lawksamercy, doctor, cried the young blood in the primrose vest, feigning a womanish simper and with immodest squirmings of his body, how you do tease a body!  Drat the man!  Bless me, I’m all of a wibbly wobbly.  Why, you’re as bad as dear little Father Cantekissem, that you are!  May this pot of four half choke me, cried Costello, if she aint in the family way.  I knows a lady what’s got a white swelling quick as I claps eyes on her.  The young surgeon, however,