It was a mighty grand affair, this ball of the Royal Irish Artillery. General Chattesworth had arrived that morning, just in time to preside over the hospitalities — he could not contribute much to the dancing — and his advent, still a little lame, but looking, as his friends told him, ten years younger for his snug little fit of the gout at Buxton, reinstated Aunt Becky in her place of power, to the secret disappointment of Madame Strafford, who had set her heart on doing the honours, and rehearsed for weeks, over her toilet, and even in bed, her little speeches, airs, and graces.

Lord Castlemallard was there, of course — and the gay and splendid Lady Moira — whom I mention because General Chattesworth opened the ball in a minuet with her ladyship — hobbling with wonderful grace, and beaming with great ceremonious smiles through his honourable martyrdom. But there were more than a score of peers there beside, with their peeresses in tall feathers, diamonds, and monstrous hoops. And the lord lieutenant was very near coming — and a lord lieutenant in those days, with a parliament to open, and all the regalia of his office about him, was a far greater personage than, in our democratic age, the sovereign in person.

Captain Cluffe had gone down in a chair to Puddock’s lodgings, to borrow a pair of magnificent knee-buckles. Puddock had a second pair, and Cluffe’s own had not, he thought, quite recovered their good looks since that confounded ducking on the night of the serenade. The gallant captain, learning that Puddock and Devereux intended walking — it was only a step across to the barrack-yard — and finding that Puddock could not at the moment lay his hand upon the buckles, and not wishing to keep the chair longer — for he knew delay would inflame the fare, and did not like dispensing his shillings —

‘Hey! walk? I like the fancy,’ cried the gay captain, sending half-a-crown down stairs to his ‘two-legged ponies,’ as people pleasantly called them. ‘I’d rather walk with you than jog along in a chair by myself, my gay fellows, any day.’

Most young fellows of spirit, at the eve of a ball, have their heads pretty full. There is always some one bright particular star to whom, even as they look on their own handsome features in the mirror, their adoration is paid.

Puddock’s shoe-buckles flashed for Gertrude Chattesworth, as he turned out his toes. For her his cravat received its last careless touch — his ruffles shook themselves, and fell in rich elegance about his plump little hands. For her his diamond ring gleamed like a burning star from his white little finger; and for her the last fragrance was thrown over his pocket-handkerchief, and the last ogle thrown upon his looking-glass. All the interest of his elaborate toilet — the whole solemn process and detail — was but a worship of his divinity, at which he officiated. Much in the same way was Cluffe affected over his bedizenment in relation to his own lady-love; but in a calmer and more long-headed fashion. Devereux’s toilet most of the young fellows held to be perfection; yet it seemed to trouble him less than all the rest. I believe it was the elegant and slender shape that would have set off anything, and that gave to his handsome costume and ‘properties’ an undefinable grace not their own. Indeed, as he leaned his elbow upon the window sash, looking carelessly across the river, he did not seem much to care what became of the labours of his toilet.

‘I have not seen her since I came; and now I’m going to this stupid ball on the chance of meeting her there. And she’ll not come — she avoids me — the chance of meeting her — and she’ll not come. Well! if she be not kind to me, what care I for whom she be? And what great matter, after all, if she were there. She’d be, I suppose, on her high horse — and — and ’tis not a feather to me. Let her take her own way. What care I? If she’s happy, why shouldn’t I— why shouldn’t I?’

Five minutes after:—

‘Who the plague are these fellows in the Phoenix? How the brutes howl over their liquor!’ said Devereux, as he and Puddock, at the door-steps, awaited Cluffe, who was fixing his buckles in the drawing-room.

‘The Corporation of Tailors,’ answered Puddock, a little loftily, for he was not inwardly pleased that the precincts of the ‘Phoenix’ should be profaned by their mechanical orgies.

Through the open bow window of the great oak parlour of the inn was heard the mighty voice of the president, who was now in the thick of his political toasts.

‘Odds bud!’ lisped little Puddock, ‘what a stentorian voice!’

‘Considering it issues from a tailor!’ acquiesced Devereux, who thought he recognised the accents, and hated tailors, who plagued him with long bills and dangerous menaces.

‘May the friends of the Marquis of Kildare be ever blessed with the tailor’s thimble,’ declaimed the portentous toast master. ‘May the needle of distress be ever pointed at all mock patriots; and a hot needle and a burning thread to all sewers of sedition!’ and then came an applauding roar.

‘And may you ride into town on your own goose, with a hot needle behind you, you roaring pigmy!’ added Devereux.

‘The Irish cooks that can’t relish French sauce!’ enunciated the same grand voice, that floated, mellowed, over the field.

‘Sauce, indeed!’ said Puddock, with an indignant lisp, as Cluffe, having joined them, they set forward together; ‘I saw some of them going in, Sir, and to look at their vulgar, unthinking countenances, you’d say they had not capacity to distinguish between the taste of a quail and a goose; but, by Jove! Sir, they have a dinner. You’re a politician, Cluffe, and read the papers. You remember the bill of fare — don’t you?— at the Lord Mayor’s entertainment in London.’

Cluffe, whose mind was full of other matters, nodded his head with a grunt.

‘Well, I’ll take my oath,’ pursued Puddock, ‘you couldn’t have made a better dinner at the Prince of Travendahl’s table. Spanish olea, if you please — ragou royal, cardoons, tendrons, shellfish in marinade, ruffs and rees, wheat-ears, green morels, fat livers, combs and notts. ’Tis rather odd, Sir, to us who employ them, to learn that our tailors, while we’re eating the dinners we do — our tailors, Sir, are absolutely gorging themselves with such things — with our money, by Jove!’

‘Yours, Puddock, not mine,’ said Devereux. ‘I haven’t paid a tail............