of business, so utterly unprepared.

These regrets rose stronger, when his after-dinner courage returned to
him as he sate solitary over his fire. "I should have had him here,"
said he to himself, "and not gone to that confounded cold hole of
his. After all, there's no place for a cock to fight on like his own
dunghill; and there's nothing able to carry a fellow well through a
tough bit of jobation [33] with a lawyer like a stiff tumbler of brandy
punch. It'd have been worth a couple of hundred to me, to have had him
out here--impertinent puppy! Well, devil a halfpenny I'll pay him!"
This thought was consolatory, and he began again to think of Boulogne.

[FOOTNOTE 33: jobation--a tedious session; scolding]




XXI. LORD BALLINDINE AT HOME


Two days after the last recorded interview between Lord Ballindine and
his friend, Dot Blake, the former found himself once more sitting down
to dinner with his mother and sisters, the Honourable Mrs O'Kelly and
the Honourable Misses O'Kelly; at least such were the titular dignities
conferred on them in County Mayo, though I believe, strictly speaking,
the young ladies had no claim to the appellation.

Mrs O'Kelly was a very small woman, with no particularly developed
character, and perhaps of no very general utility. She was fond of her
daughters, and more than fond of her son, partly because he was so