Mount Music. Ross Martin

that her nephew would be put up for the night at the Doctor's own house at Cluhir.

      "You can say to her that I met the Hunt, and one of them told me what happened," said the Big Doctor, "and I knew then what to do."

      It might, indeed, habitually be said of Dr. Mangan that he knew very well what to do. There were, indeed, but two occasions on record when it might have seemed that he had not so known. The first of these was when he had abandoned an improving practice in Dublin to work as his father's partner in his native Cluhir, the second, when, preliminary to that return, he had married a lady, alleged, by inventive and disagreeable people, to have been his cook. The disagreeable people had also said disagreeable things as to the nature of the stress that had prompted the marriage. But it was now twenty years since the Mangans had been established at Number Six, The Mall, Cluhir; the Doctor had come in for his father's money as well as his practice, and was respected as "a warm man"; the disagreeable ones had grown old, and people who are both old and disagreeable cannot expect to command a large audience. Mrs. Mangan, on the contrary, was neither the one nor the other, being, at this time, but little over forty, and as kindly, lazy, and handsome a creature as ever lived down spiteful gossip by good-nature. When "The Dawkthor" (as she called him, with a drowsy drag on the first syllable) had galloped in at one o'clock to command Barty's room to be got ready at once, Mrs. Mangan was still in what she called "dishable," and was straying between her bedroom and the kitchen, pleasurably involved in the cares of both.

      "They say young Coppinger fell in the river, and he's broken his wrist," said the Doctor rapidly, stamping into his wife's room, bringing the wind of the hills with him. "I'll bring him here as soon as I can get hold of him."

      "The creature!" replied Mrs. Mangan, sympathetically.

      "Well, don't be waiting to pity him now!" said her husband, stuffing bandages into his pocket, "but hurry and put hot jars into the bed—and clean sheets. Don't forget now, Annie!"

      He lumbered in his long boots and spurs, down to the surgery, still issuing directions.

      "Tishy'll be back directly—she'll give you a hand—and Annie! tell Hannah to have some hot soup ready. Now, hurry, for God's sake!"

      The front door into the Mall, Cluhir's most fashionable quarter, banged.

      "Well, well!" said Mrs. Mangan, still sympathetic, while she removed the curling-pins from her bison fringe; "wasn't it the will of God that I had a headache this morning and couldn't go to Mass! I'll have something to say to Father Greer now if he draws it up to me that I was backward in my duty!"

      Much fortified by this reflection, Mrs. Mangan hurriedly proceeded with her toilette, squalling meanwhile to her bench-woman in the kitchen a summary of the Doctor's orders. She had no more than achieved what she called her "Sunday dress," a complimentary effort to be equally divided between Saint Stephen and young Mr. Coppinger, when the back-door into the yard from the house slammed, and her daughter's voice announced her return.

      "Come up, Tishy, till I talk to you!" shouted Mrs. Mangan, slinging a long gold watch-chain over her head and festooning it upon her ample bosom: "Did you meet Pappy?" she continued, as her daughter's steps drew near.

      "I did to be sure," returned Miss Letitia, coming into her mother's room and flinging herself into an armchair, "when I was crossing the bridge it was. He roared to me to hurry you and Hannah. Holy Mary Joseph! How stiff I am! That old horn on the saddle has the right leg cut off me!"

      "Well, never mind your legs now," replied Mrs. Mangan, peremptorily, "what I want to know is what sort is this young man that Pappy's bringing in on top of us? In God's name, why couldn't he be let go home to his own?"

      "'Young man' is it!" retorted Tishy; "he's nothing but a boy at school, and a cross boy too! Such beating of his pony as he had when he wouldn't jump for him! Didn't I try and make poor Zoé go before him, and th' eye he cast at her! I thought he'd beat me, too!"

      "Oh, and is a boy all he is then?" said Mrs. Mangan, with relief in her voice: "you'd think by the work your father had 'twas the Lord Leftenant was in it! Run away now, Tishy, like a good girl, and get those clothes off you, and help Hannah with Barty's room. Boy or man or whatever he is, he must have a bed under him!"

      It was a very deplorable boy who presently arrived at No. 6, The Mall, Cluhir, and was practically lifted off the car by the Big Doctor. Francis Aloysius Mangan had many aspects of character of an undesirable kind, but they were linked with one virtue, the Irish gift, of a good-natured heart. With his enormous thick hands, that made Larry think of a tiger's paws, he undressed the boy as cleverly and gently as he had set the broken bones of his wrist. Mrs. Mangan and Hannah had not failed; the soup and the jars were, as the latter authority had pronounced, "as hot as love," similarly passioned was the ardour of the whisky-punch, with which the proceedings had opened. Combined with a subsequent sleeping-draught, it conferred the boon of sleep, and for some hours, at all events, Larry forgot his recently-acquired knowledge of what pain was. But not for many hours. In the long darkness of the winter morning he lay with a fast mounting temperature, while he made the discovery, common to all in his case, that upon the particular bone that has been broken, the entire existence pivots. And, in addition to the broken bone, by the time that Miss Frederica had driven in from Coppinger's Court, there was but little doubt that what Dr. Mangan called, lightly, "a touch of pneumonia," would keep young Mr. Coppinger in Barty's room for a time unspecified.

      Miss Frederica drove home again in a seriously perturbed frame of mind, and with indignation against the decrees of Providence hot within her.

      "I wired for a nurse for him!" she said to Lady Isabel, "I could not plant myself upon them! It's all most uncomfortable and unavoidable. Of course they've been extremely kind——"

      At the back of Miss Coppinger's mind was the wish, that she trampled on whenever it stirred, that the Mangans had been less unexceptionally kind and Good Samaritan-like. "Such an obligation!" she groaned; "they've turned their own son out of the house to make room for Larry! But oh, my dear Isabel, if you could imagine what the house is like! The untidiness! The dirt! Of course they're unspeakably kind, and Dr. Mangan is certainly very clever, and has managed Larry wonderfully," went on Frederica, repenting her of her evil speaking, "and I must say I can't help liking Mrs. Mangan, but the girl——!" Miss Coppinger shut her mouth so tightly that her lips became thin, white lines. "Keep the door of your lips" was a text which she had in her youth illuminated for herself. She often found that nothing save a sudden and violent slam would keep that door shut, and, to do her justice, the slams, when the conversation turned on the Mangan household, were both frequent and violent.

      This was later, when Larry was getting better, and when his aunt had begun to find the daily drive to Cluhir something of a strain. It was not until he was practically convalescent that he was permitted to receive other visitors. Even the daughter of the house, and that unknown son, into whose bedroom he had been thrust, were, for him, beneath the surface, and their presence only inferential. Barty was domiciled at a friend's, and Miss Tishy held aloof, the hushed voices, and general restraint imposed by illness, being not at all to her taste. Lady Isabel came once, with his aunt, and Christian crept shyly in behind them. Christian was wont to be silent in the presence of her elders. That great and admirable maxim, once widely instilled into the young, whose purport is that children should seldom be seen and never heard, had early been accepted by Christian, without resentment, even, as she grew older, with gratitude. Having diffidently taken Larry's listless and pallid paw, she had slipped into the background, and waited silently, while her eager brain absorbed and stored every detail for future meditation. Long after Larry had lightly forgotten all save the large facts of his illness and incarceration, Christian could describe the Pope, whose highly-coloured presentment beatified (rather than beautified) the wall over Larry's bed, and could imitate, with the accuracy of a phonograph, the voice of Mrs. Mangan, as she issued her opinions on the state of the weather to her distinguished visitors.

CHAPTER X

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