Short Fiction

of corresponding magnificence. At that time ladies wore next to no waists at all, and their clothes were made almost as tight as bolster-cases, if you just suppose a bit of string all round tied tight, and as close under the armpits as anatomy would permit. Whatever advantages this style of dress had, I think it was rather trying to persons of Mrs. Molloy’s figure, and was calculated, with uncommon candour, to display every pound of flesh she boasted. She had three necklaces on, and a roll of fat for every one, and a pair of Roman-pearl pendants, that were as big as duck-eggs, and kept swinging and knocking on her inflamed shoulders whenever she turned her head. I will say this for Mrs. Molloy, that for her time of life she was as showy and plentiful a figure, and as roomy a woman as you could wish to fill a window with on a Lord Mayor’s Day; and this night, in the front row of the box, next his Excellency, she was looking her very best, and, I dare say, a more striking figure than the Lord Lieutenant himself.

Mrs. Molloy was so anxious to get next the Lord Lieutenant, and her daughter to get as far as possible from Mrs. Molloy that Mundy and I were put side by side in the middle, Miss Theodora on my right, and the old lady on Mundy’s left next the viceregal box. I remember the arrangement well, because we were hardly in our places, and I saying something engaging to Miss Theodora Molloy, sitting as I was side by side with my friend the lieutenant, when a fellow in the gallery calls out, “Three cheers for Mundy and his man Friday,” and three cheers followed that made the lustres tremble.

This you may be sure made me feel rather fidgetty, more especially as who should I see but that blackguard young Figges, and all his malevolent family, grinning and sniggering away in a front row, only a box or two off. He was watching me, and laughing, you’d say, for a wager, and bursting with spite.

I was as sure as could be, of a thing I did not actually see, that the sneaking rascal had sent a lot of his shop-boys into the upper gallery to make fun of me before the people. Of course he saw my name down and who I was with when he went to take his places.

It was a terrible unlucky thing. It was putting me out. I could not hear half she said; and two or three times I was very near talking nonsense.

In a minute more another chap calls out from the gallery: “A cheer for the big soger with the little hyacinth in his buttonhole,” and off goes another cheer.

Well, this blew over like the last, leaving me feeling rather small and blushing all over. But I did not pretend to think they meant me, and went on talking all the same, thinking the overture would never begin, and the curtain go up to put me out of pain.

Then there comes a thundering cheer for Mr. Toole, in the box next his Excellency, and I saw the Figgesses tittering.

No matter, I was determined to keep never-minding, and to talk on to that beautiful girl as if nothing in the world was going the least bit wrong.

“May I make bold,” says I, “to ask you, Miss Molloy, how long it is since you and Mr. O’Kelly were first acquainted?”

“And why should you care a brass farthing, Mr. Toole, to know?” says she, looking as innocent and startled-like as a little frightened bird. “Sure there’s no harm in poor little Micky O’Kelly!”

“No harm, I dare say, and not much good,” said I; “but whatever he is I envy him, Miss Molloy, and lament all the precious time I have lost.”

I said this, you may be sure, as tenderly as I could.

“I hope you’re gettin’ on with her, Mr. Toole,” calls out a fellow affectionately from the gallery.

“Never mind,” says another, “he’s the boy that’ll melt her soon.”

I felt my very cheeks tingling with shame. There was another cheer, and those accursed Figgesses grinning. Well, it could not last forever, I thought. “Will those beastly fiddlers never begin?” I thought. “Is there no one else in the house to make fun of but me? Will I ever be out o’ this, dead or alive?”

The house was now filling fast; the box-doors were opening and clapping; a human flood was oozing and tumbling into the pit from every entrance. The gallery was becoming more noisy every minute; the orchestra were assembling, were chatting together, turning over music, and tuning violins, double-basses, and all sorts of instruments. There was a cheer for “Nosey,” which was the nickname of the “leader” of those days. There was the usual “groan for the man in the white hat,” and call for “music,” and two or three fruits, small and hard, of that popular kind which were displayed by the vendors at the corner of Carlisle Bridge, in old japanned snuffer-dishes, and offered from 11 o’clock, a.m., to sun-setting, with inviting monotony, in the words, “Fourteen scarlet craftons for a halfpenny,” hit a hat or two in the pit, and one sounded the big drum with a spirit that made the accomplished drummer start, and drew upon him a glance of indignation from “Nosey,” now upon his throne. These “fine scarlet craftons,” as I knew from experience, were as cheap and convenient an ammunition as a man could take with him to the upper gallery, when he wished to take half-an-hour’s innocent diversion with bald heads in the pit. Only two or three came down now; but they were “like the first of a thundershower,” as Lord Byron says, and I knew they were signs of the coming storm.

And now, on a sudden, everyone in the house stood up, the orchestra struck up “God Save the King.” The Lord