“Oh! that,” said I, “you must not think of.  Your carriage is a coupe, and I cannot think of crowding you.”

“Why, you don’t seriously want to affront me, I hope, for I flatter myself that a more perfect carriage for two people cannot be built.  Hobson made it on a plan of my own, and I am excessively proud of it, I assure you.  Come, that matter is decided—­now for supper.  Are there many English here just now?—­By-the-by, those new ‘natives’ I think I saw you standing with on the balcony—­who are they?”

“Oh! the ladies—­oh!  Yes, people I came over with—­”

“One was pretty, I fancied.  Have you supped?  Just order something, will you—­meanwhile, I shall write a few lines before the post leaves.”  —­Saying which, he dashed up stairs after the waiter, and left me to my meditations.

“This begins to be pleasant,” thought I, as the door closed, leaving me alone in the “salon.”  In circumstances of such moment, I had never felt so nonplussed as now, how to decline Kilkee’s invitation, without discovering my intimacy with the Binghams—­and yet I could not, by any possibility, desert them thus abruptly.  Such was the dilemma.  “I see but one thing for it,” said I, gloomily, as I strode through the coffee-room, with my head sunk and my hands behind my back—­“I see but one thing left—­I must be taken ill to-night, and not be able to leave my bed in the morning—­a fever—­a contagious fever—­blue and red spots all over me —­and be raving wildly before breakfast time; and if ever any discovery takes place of my intimacy above stairs, I must only establish it as a premonitory symptom of insanity, which seized me in the packet.  And now for a doctor that will understand my case, and listen to reason, as they would call it in Ireland.”  With this idea uppermost, I walked out into the court-yard to look for a commissionaire to guide me in my search.  Around on every side of me stood the various carriages and voitures of the hotel and its inmates, to the full as distinctive and peculiar in character as their owners.  “Ah! there is Kilkee’s,” said I, as my eye lighted upon the well-balanced and elegant little carriage which he had been only with justice encomiumizing.  “It is certainly perfect, and yet I’d give a handful of louis-d’ors it was like that venerable cabriolet yonder, with the one wheel and no shafts.  But, alas! these springs give little hope of a break down, and that confounded axle will outlive the patentee.  But still, can nothing be done?—­eh?  Come, the thought is a good one—­I say, garcon, who greases the wheels of the carriage here?”

“C’est moi, monsieur,” said a great oaf, in wooden shoes and a blouse.

“Well, then, do you understand these?” said I, touching the patent axle-boxes with my cane.

He shook his head.

“Then who does, here?”

“Ah!  Michael understands them perfectly.”

“Then bring him here,” said I.