tions, they are treated with a respect that they do not receive
elsewhere. The Doctor's orders were strict, and Larry spent the last
days of his stay at No. 6, The Mall, seated in semi-invalid state by
the dining-room fire, occupied, mainly, in the consumption of
literature provided by his new friend, Mr. Barty Mangan, that
consisted of poems, books, and pamphlets of precisely that shade of
politics of which his family most thoroughly disapproved, and
absorbing what would be, in their opinion, the most entirely poisonous
points of view.

The Big Doctor, smoking a comfortable evening pipe over the fire,
would join in the discussions between his son and his visitor,
offering just as much opposition to Larry's revolutionary flights as
was stimulating, and flattering his sense of youth and daring.

"We mustn't send him back to his auntie too much of a rebel
altogether!" The Doctor would say, grinning at the enthusiast with his
pipe wedged under a tooth; "isn't it good enough for you to be a poor
decent old Nationalist like myself? I'm sure there's no one would
disapprove of _me_, is there, Annie?"

"Don't be too sure of that at all!" Mrs. Mangan would reply
coquettishly, trying to look as if she did not agree with him; "wait
till his auntie hears the notions Larry's taking up with, and she'll
think we're all the worst in the world! And the Major! The Major'll go
cracked-mad!"

"It doesn't matter where he goes!" says Larry, defiantly, "I've had
these 'notions,' as you call them, for ages and ages!"

"Ah, God help you, child!" Mrs. Mangan would probably say, "keep quiet
now, till I get you a glass of hot milk!"

Politics did not form the only point of contact that had been
established between Larry and the Mangan household. Since his
promotion to comparative convalescence, Tishy, daughter of the house,
had entered more actively into his scheme of life, and the point of
entrance was music. Some divergence in view as to music is more easily
condoned, on both sides, than in the other realms of the spirit. It
matters not from how far countries the travellers may come, or how
widely sundered may be their ideals, there are rest-houses at which
they can draw rein and find agreement. One of these, possibly the
greatest of them, is folk song. Ireland, whose head is ever turned
over her shoulder, looking to the past, has, in her folk song, at
least, reason and justification for her preoccupation with what has
been in her music,