14 The Real C/tarlotte. 



the game. Charlotte was less rash. She steered her course 

 clear of the tennis grounds, and of the bench of matrons, 

 passed the six Miss Beatties with a comprehensive " How 

 are ye, girls ? " and took up her position under one of the 

 tall elm trees. 



Under the next tree a few men were assembled, herding 

 together for mutual protection after the manner of men, and 

 laying down the law to each other about road sessions, the 

 grand jury, and Irish politics generally. They were a fairly 

 representative trio ; a country gentleman with a grey mous- 

 tache and a loud voice in which he was announcing that 

 nothing would give him greater pleasure than to pull the 

 rope at the execution of a certain English statesman ; a 

 slight, dejected-looking clergyman, who vied with Major 

 Waller in his denunciations, but chastenedly, like an echo 

 in a cathedral aisle ; and a smartly dressed man of about 

 thirty-five, of whom a more detailed description need not be 

 given^ as he has been met with in the first chapter, and 

 the six years after nine-and-twenty do little more than 

 mellow a man's taste in checks, and sprinkle a grey hair or 

 two on his temples. 



Miss Mullen listened for a few minutes to the melancholy 

 pessimisms of the archdeacon, and then, interrupting Major 

 Waller in a fine outburst on the advisability of martial law, 

 she thrust herself and her attendant cloud of midges into 

 the charmed circle of the smoke of Mr. Lambert's cigar- 

 ette. 



"Ho ! do I hear me old friend the Major at politics?" 

 she said, shaking hands effusively with the three men. " I 

 declare I'm a better politician than any one of you ! D'ye 

 know how I served Tom Casey, the land-leaguing plumber, 

 yesterday ? I had him mending my tank, and when I got 

 him into it I whipped the ladder away, and told him not 

 a step should he budge till he sang * God save the Queen ! ' 

 I was arguing there half an hour with him in water up to 

 his middle before J converted him, and then it wasn't so 

 much the warmth of his convictions as the cold of his legs 

 made him tune up. I call that practical politics ! " 



The speed and vigour with which this story was told 

 would have astounded anyone who did not know Miss 

 Mullen's powers of narration, but Mr. Lambert, to whom it 



