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However, I hurried down and entered the drawing-room, determined to keep my position near the door, so that I might have as little as possible to do on entering and as little as possible in going out. But I had other difficulties in store for me. I had not as yet been introduced to Mrs. O’Conor; nor to Miss O’Conor, the squire’s unmarried sister.

“Upon my word I thought you were never coming,” said Mr. O’Conor as soon as he saw me. “It is just one hour since we entered the house. Jack, I wish you would find out what has come to that fellow Larry,” and again he rang the bell. He was too angry, or it might be too impatient to go through the ceremony of introducing me to anybody.

I saw that the two girls looked at me very sharply, but I stood at the back of an arm-chair so that no one could see my feet. But that little imp Tizzy walked round deliberately, looked at my heels, and then walked back again. It was clear that she was in the secret.

There were eight or ten people in the room, but I was too much fluttered to notice well who they were.

“Mamma,” said Miss O’Conor, “let me introduce Mr. Green to you.”

It luckily happened that Mrs. O’Conor was on the same side of the fire as myself, and I was able to take the hand which she offered me without coming round into the middle of the circle. Mrs. O’Conor was a little woman, apparently not of much importance in the world, but, if one might judge from first appearance, very good-natured.

“And my aunt Die, Mr. Green,” said Kate, pointing to a very straight- backed, grim-looking lady, who occupied a corner of a sofa, on the opposite side of the hearth. I knew that politeness required that I should walk across the room and make acquaintance with her. But under the existing circumstances how was I to obey the dictates of politeness? I was determined therefore to stand my ground, and merely bowed across the room at Miss O’Conor. In so doing I made an enemy who never deserted me during the whole of my intercourse with the family. But for her, who knows who might have been sitting opposite to me as I now write?

“Upon my word, Mr. Green, the ladies will expect much from an Adonis who takes so long over his toilet,” said Tom O’Conor in that cruel tone of banter which he knew so well how to use.

“You forget, father, that men in London can’t jump in and out of their clothes as quick as we wild Irishmen,” said Jack.

“Mr. Green knows that we expect a great deal from him this evening. I hope you polk well, Mr. Green,” said Kate.

I muttered something about never dancing, but I knew that that which I said was inaudible.

“I don’t think Mr. Green will dance,” said Tizzy; “at least not much.” The impudence of that child was, I think, unparalleled by any that I have ever witnessed.

“But in the name of all that’s holy, why don’t we have dinner?” And Mr. O’Conor thundered at the door. “Larry, Larry, Larry!” he screamed.

“Yes, yer honer, it’ll be all right in two seconds,” answered Larry, from some bottomless abyss. “Tare an’ ages; what’ll I do at all,” I heard him continuing, as he made his way into the hall. Oh what a clatter he made upon the pavement,–for it was all stone! And how the drops of perspiration stood upon my brow as I listened to him!

And then there was a pause, for the man had gone into the dining- room. I could see now that Mr. O’Conor was becoming very angry, and Jack the eldest son–oh, how often he and I have laughed over all this since–left the drawing-room for the second time. Immediately afterwards Larry’s footsteps were again heard, hurrying across the hall, and then there was a great slither, and an exclamation, and the noise of a fall–and I could plainly hear poor Larry’s head strike against the stone floor.