The Viceroy, being a plucky man, continued to sit serenely with his eyes on the stage. Old Molloy popped his bald head out to see what was going on, and instantly, not a scarlet “crafton,” but one of those big, yellow apples that were called cannonballs—never did they better deserve their name—burst with a thump on his shining bald head, a bit of it, as big as a walnut, hit me in the eye, exactly as I was saying, with a look of unutterable love in the unfortunate eye that I had fixed on her: “Dear Miss Theodora, fear nothing; am not I beside you?” Some pulp marked the spot where it had hit her papa, and a “noggin” of cider was streaming over his massive forehead and intelligent eyes, and I dare say old Molloy thought, for a minute, he was back again on the fair green of Ballynawhop.
If we had known that the Lord Lieutenant’s box was likely to become the mark for all this artillery, I doubt if Mrs. Molloy would have been in such a hurry to secure the place of honour.
“Papa dear, are ye hurted?” Miss Theodora exclaimed with much trepidation; and “Oh, la! There’s mamma!” And sure enough a cat had at that moment alighted with great directness on the head of Mrs. Molloy, whirling her tasteful turban and wig over her left cheek, and displaying instead a head as bald as her husband’s. A live cat, bedad! If it had dropped into the box among us, Saint Peter would not have kept me in it an instant! Luckily it tumbled off Mrs. Molloy’s turban, head over heels among the groundlings in the pit. Grasping her wig and turban with both hands she rose exclaiming, “Take me out of this hell upon earth some of ye.”
At the same instant the Lord Lieutenant, having made up his mind to retire, rose with much dignity, and received a large lemon on his back; and I myself saw a mutton kidney in the eye of the Attorney-General, in the box opposite to ours.
It was indeed high time for all who had ladies to look after to beat a retreat, and we were soon in the corridor, and making our way down the stairs. Theodora was on my arm. I was afraid she might faint before we got her into the coach.
“Are you ill?” I whispered, squeezing her arm gently to the lapel of my coat with my elbow. “I hope you were not very much frightened?”
Upon this the charming girl treated me to a dazzling stare of her fine black eyes, and burst out laughing.
“Ah! Then, is it what you’re jokin’ me, you are, Mr. Toole?” says she. “Affeard, indeed! I wish you saw the stones and claealpins hoppin’ on and off the boys’ polls at the Fair of Killbattery. Ha, ha! Papa’s nothing the worse, ye see; and, indeed, the smack of it took a start out of me, for I only saw it with the corner of my eye, and I could not tell but it was a paving-stone was in it, and the pulp flying out alarmed me for a moment for the dear man’s brains. And mamma got it, too; that was a cat, or my name’s not Theodora. Mamma! Who’s she with? Oh, Mundy, I see. Mamma, dear, how’s your head?”
“Bad enough, joole,” rejoined Mrs. Molloy. “My beautiful turbot’s rooned and smathered on my head!”
The people who looked round to see who the speaker was who had suffered in so unusual a way, beheld Mrs. Molloy with old Molloy’s red and yellow silk pocket-handkerchief tied under her chin, holding her wig and turban down in their place, and looking, certainly, not unlike that class of ladies who used to carry flatfish on their heads, and certainly I did feel a little bashful about her, for one side of her wig was dangling from under Molloy’s handkerchief between her shoulders, and the Figgesses, who were coming down the stairs behind us, were laughing like hyenas. I don’t think there was an unlucky thing happened to us that night but the eyes of that same beastly family were upon us.
I was thankful when Mrs. Molloy was shut up in her hack coach, and her daughter, her husband, and myself in ours.
We had all recovered our spirits by the time we had reached our destination on Ormond Quay. Up the stairs we stumbled, talking all together, and into the front drawing-room, where Juggy Hanlon had already lighted candles. Mrs. Molloy slipped quietly upstairs to restore her distracted head to order, while we talked on in the room where we had first mustered, and we could hear the servants tramping up and down the back drawing-room, clinking plates, and jingling spoons and knives and forks, and squabbling in loud and voluble accents over the arrangement of the supper.
“Mr. Lieutenant Kramm has just been telling me, Miss Theodora, that your music is all that I should have anticipated,” said I, “would it be asking
