The master of Drumgool, genial and cosey, and the very personification of welcome, had scarcely taken in with a glance the two pleasant-looking young people who had invaded his drawing-room when the explainer of situations rushed into the breach.

"I'm awfully sorry," said he, "but I've made a mistake. I met this young lady at the inn at Cloyne, and as she was coming here I came on the same car, for I thought you were a Mr. Michael French I'd met in London. I've been fishing down here."

"You expected me last night," said Miss Grimshaw. "My name is Grimshaw."

"Faith," said Mr. French, "this is a pleasant surprise. Sit down, sit down."

"I ought to say my name is Dashwood," put in the explainer.

"Sit down, sit down. I'm delighted to see you both. Staying at the inn, are you? And how do you like Mrs. Sheelan? And you met at the inn? Of course you did. Miss Grimshaw, I don't know how, in the name of wonder, I'm going to apologise to you for driving you all over the country. Is that chair easy? No, it's not—take this one. Look at it before you sit in it. Dan O'Connell took his seat in that chair when he was here for the elections, in my grandfather's time, and I have the bed upstairs he slept in. Which Michael French, I wonder, was it you met? Was it a man with a big, black beard?"

"Yes," replied Mr. Dashwood.

"And gold-rimmed spectacles?"

"Yes."

"Did he bawl like a bull?"

"He had rather a loud voice."

"That's him. He's my cousin, bad luck to him! No matter. I'll be even with him some day yet. He's the biggest black—I mean, we have never been friends; but that's always the way between relations. And that reminds me—I've never bid you welcome to Drumgool, Miss Grimshaw. Welcome you are to the house and all it holds, and make yourself at home! And here we are sitting in the old drawing-room that's only used for company once in a twelvemonth. Come down to the sitting-room, both of you. There's a fire there, and Effie will be in in a minute. She's out driving in the donkey-carriage. This isn't a bad bit of an old hall, is it?" continued he as they passed through the hall. "It's the oldest part of the house. Do you see that split in the panelling up there? That's where a bullet went in the duel between Counsellor Kinsella and Colonel White. 'Black White' was his nickname, and well he deserved it. They fought here, for it was snowing so thick outside you couldn't see a man at ten paces. Eighteen hundred and one, that was, and they in their graves all these years! No, no one was killed. Only a tenant that had come in to see the fun, and he got in the line of fire. He recovered, I believe, though they say he carried the bullet in his head to the end of his days. This is the sitting-room. It's the warmest room in winter. The old house is as full of holes as a colander, but you'll never get a draught here. Norah!"—putting his head out of the door.

"Yes, sir."

"Bring the decanters. You don't mind smoking, Miss Grimshaw? That's a good job. Are you fond of horses, Mr. Dashwood?"

"Rather."

"Well, there's the hoof of the Shaughraun. He carried everything before him in Ireland. He was my grandfather's, and he was entered for the Derby, and some blackguards poisoned him. It would be before your time, and his death made more stir than the death of anything that ever went on four legs, except, maybe, old Nebuchadnezzar. They made songs about it, and I have a ballad upstairs in my desk a yard long my father bought from an old woman in Abbey-street. Here's the whisky. Sure, Norah, what have you been dreaming about, and why didn't you bring the wine for the young lady? Not drink wine! Well, now, just say the word, and I'll get you some tea. Or would you like coffee? Well, well. Say 'when,' Mr. Dashwood."

"I like this room," said Miss Grimshaw, looking round at the books and the oak panelling. "It's so cosey, and yet so ghosty. Have you a ghost?"

"A which? I beg your pardon," said Mr. French, pausing in his operations with a soda-water siphon.

"A ghost."

"I believe there's an old woman without a head walks in the top corridor by the servants' bedrooms. At least, that's the story; but it's all nonsense, though it does to frighten the girls with, and get them to bed early. Who's that?"

"If you plaze, sir," said Norah, speaking through the half-open door, "Miss Effie's back from her drive and upstairs, and she's wild to see the young lady."

"That's me, I suppose," said Miss Grimshaw. "I'll go up, if I may."

"Sure, with pleasure," said Mr. French, holding the door open for her with all the grace of a Brummell, while the girl passed out.

Then he closed the door, waited till she was well out of earshot, and then, sitting down in an armchair, he "rocked and roared" with laughter.

"Don't speak to me," said he, though Mr. Dashwood had not said a word. "Did you ever see me trying to keep my face? Sure, man, she's the governess, and I thought it was an old lady in spectacles that would be coming. Faith, and I'll have to get a chaperon. You might have blown me away with a fan when she said who she was. But I didn't let on, did I? I didn't show the start she's given me? Are you sure?"

Assured on this point, Mr. French poured himself out another glass of whisky. He explained that he'd got Miss Grimshaw "out of an advertisement." Then, much to the edification of Mr. Dashwood, he went into the bailiff business, the beauty of Nip and Tuck, the price Colonel Sherbourne had paid, explaining that it was not the money he cared about so much as the injury it would have done him in Sherbourne's estimation if the horses had not been delivered.

It was an adventure after the heart of Bobby Dashwood, who, in his short life, had dealt freely and been dealt with by money-lenders. Mr. Dashwood was what women call a "nice-looking boy," but he was not particularly intellectual when you got him off the subjects he had made particularly his own. He had failed for Sandhurst. If a proficiency in cricket and fives had been allowed to count, he would have got high marks; but they wanted mathematics, and Mr. Dashwood could not supply this requirement; in French, too, he was singularly deficient. The deficiencies of Mr. Dashwood would have furnished out half a dozen young men well equipped for failure in business, and that is why, I suppose, he managed to make such a success of life.

The joy Mr. Dashwood managed to extract from that usually unjoyful thing called life hinted at alchemy rather than chemistry. Joy, too, without any by-products in the way of headaches or heartaches. Utterly irresponsible, but without a serious vice, always bright, clean, and healthy, and alert for any sort of sport as a terrier, he was as good to meet and have around one as a spring morning—that is to say, when one was in tune for him.

He had five hundred a year of his own, with prospects of great wealth on the death of an uncle, and even out of this poverty he managed to extract pleasure of a sort in the excitement of settling with creditors and trying to make both ends meet—which they never did.

"What a joke!" said Mr. Dashwood. "And she never split. She said she'd been leaving a gentleman at an old castle—and she never grumbled, though she was nearly dropping off the car. I say, isn't she a ripper?"

"Here's to her," said French. "And now, come out and have a look at the stables and grounds. Lunch is at one, and we have an hour."

The youth and prettiness of Miss Grimshaw after the first pleasing shock did not trouble him in the least. A straight-minded man and a soul of honour in everything not appertaining to bill discounters, the propriety or impropriety of the situation did not cause him a moment's thought. The only thing that worried him for a second or two was the remembrance of Mr. Giveen. How would that gentleman act under the intoxication sure to be produced by the newcomer's youth and prettiness?

"She'd have been down herself to see you, miss," said Norah as she led the way upstairs, "only she's gone in the legs. This way, miss, along the passidge; this is the door."

A scuffling noise made itself evident as Norah turned the door-handle, and Miss Grimshaw, entering a brightly and pleasantly furnished room, found herself face to face with Miss French, who was sitting up on a sofa, flushed and bright-eyed and with the appearance of having suddenly returned to her invalidhood and position on the couch after an excursion about the apartment.

"Hullo!" said the child.

"Hullo!" said Miss Grimshaw.

"Oh, will you look at her?" cried Norah. "And the rug I put round her legs all over the place! You've been off the couch, Miss Effie!"

"I only put my feet on the ground," protested the child. "You needn't be going on at me. Bother my old legs! I wish they was cut off!"

"And so you are Effie?" said Miss Grimshaw, taking her seat on the edge of the couch. "Do you know who I am?"

"Rather," replied Miss French. "You're Miss Grimshaw."

There was a subdued chuckle in the tone of her voice, as though Miss Grimshaw was a joke that had just come off, rather than a governess who had just arrived—a chuckle hinting at the fact that Miss Grimshaw had been the subject of humorous discussion and speculation in the French household for some time past.

"You'll ring, miss, when you want me to show you your room?" said Norah. Then she withdrew, and Miss Grimshaw found herself alone with her charge.

The room was half nursery, half sitting-room, papered with a sprightly green-sprigged and rose-patterned paper. Pictures from Christmas numbers of the Graphic and pictures of cats by Louis Wain adorned the walls; there were a number of yellow-backed books on the book-shelf, and in one corner a pile of old comic papers—Punches, Judys, and Funs—all of an ancient date.

All the light literature in Drumgool House found its way here—and remained. The yellow-backed books were the works of Arthur Sketchley, a most pleasing humourist whose name has faded almost from our memories. "Mrs. Brown's 'Oliday Outings," "Mrs. Brown in Paris," "Mrs. Brown at the Seaside"—all were here. They had been bought by some member of the French family with a taste for humour, as had also the comic papers.

To Miss French in her captivity the dead-and-gone artists, the dead-and-gone jokes, the fashions and manners of the eighties, which are as Thebes to us, were fresh and vigorous. Up-to-date papers and books came little in her way, for French was not a reading man.