Had our advent conferred the order of knighthood upon the host, he could not have received us with more “empressement.”  He shook us all in turn by the hand, to the number of eight and thirty, and then presented us seriatim to his spouse, a very bejewelled lady of some forty years—­who, what between bugles, feathers, and her turban, looked excessively like a Chinese pagoda upon a saucer.  The rooms were crowded to suffocation—­the noise awful—­and the company crushing and elbowing rather a little more than you expect where the moiety are of the softer sex.  However, “on s’habitue a tout,” sayeth the proverb, and with truth, for we all so perfectly fell in with the habits of the place, that ere half an hour, we squeezed, ogled, leered, and drank champagne like the rest of the corporation.

“Devilish hot work, this,” said the colonel, as he passed me with two rosy-cheeked, smiling ladies on either arm; “the mayor—­that little fellow in the punch-coloured shorts—­has very nearly put me hors de combat with champagne; take care of him, I advise you.”

Tipsy as I felt myself, I was yet sufficiently clear to be fully alive to the drollery of the scene before me.  Flirtations that, under other circumstances, would demand the secrecy and solitude of a country green lane, or some garden bower, were here conducted in all the open effrontery of wax lights and lustres; looks were interchanged, hands were squeezed, and soft things whispered, and smiles returned; till the intoxication of “punch negus” and spiced port, gave way to the far greater one of bright looks and tender glances.  Quadrilles and country dances—­waltzing there was none, (perhaps all for the best)—­whist, backgammon, loo—­unlimited for uproar—­sandwiches, and warm liquors, employed us pretty briskly till supper was announced, when a grand squeeze took place on the stairs—­the population tending thitherward with an eagerness that a previous starvation of twenty-four hours could alone justify.  Among this dense mass of moving muslin, velvet and broad-cloth, I found myself chaperoning an extremely tempting little damsel, with a pair of laughing blue eyes and dark eyelashes, who had been committed to my care and guidance for the passage.

“Miss Moriarty, Mr. Lorrequer,” said an old lady in green and spangles, who I afterwards found was the lady mayoress.

“The nicest girl in the room,” said a gentleman with a Tipperary accent, “and has a mighty nice place near Athlone.”

The hint was not lost upon me, and I speedily began to faire l’amiable to my charge; and before we reached the supper room, learned certain particulars of her history, which I have not yet forgot.  She was, it seems, sister to a lady then in the room, the wife of an attorney, who rejoiced in the pleasing and classical appellation of Mr. Mark Anthony Fitzpatrick; the aforesaid Mark Anthony being a tall, raw-boned, black-whiskered, ill-looking dog, that from time to