and then she laid her lips on his.

Larry found, with surprise, that they returned the pressure of his own
as he kissed her. The spark that had been in his eyes seemed to have
flown to his lips, and met another spark in hers.

There was a moment of silence. Larry found himself a little out of
breath, and somehow bewildered. There was more in it than he thought.
He didn't quite know what to do next.

"Thank you very much," he said, stiffly, and offered his arm.

In silence they walked down the stairs again. The piano had begun, and
"Sir Roger de Coverley" was being thundered forth. At the door they
met the Doctor. Larry released Tishy's arm.

"If you don't mind," he said to the Doctor, "I think I'll go up to
bed. I'm tired."

After he had got to his room he shook himself, much as a dog renews
its vitality by shaking its ears. Then he poured some water into the
basin and washed his hot face, scrubbing his lips with the sponge.

Yet, to his infinite annoyance, he seemed still to feel the pressure
of Tishy's warm mouth on his.

CHAPTER XII

It is, or should be, superfluous to say that Miss Frederica Coppinger
viewed with disfavour, that was the more poignant for its
helplessness, Larry's adoption and assimilation by the Mangan family.

"Disastrous!" she said in a tragic voice, to the Rector of Knockceoil
parish. "If he were a Protestant it wouldn't matter so much; but, as
things are, for _him_ to be thrown among these second-rate,
Nationalistic, Roman Catholics--!"

The intensity of Miss Coppinger's emotions silenced him. She had
indeed beaten her biggest drum, and she knew it.

The Rector, the Reverend Charles Fetherston, nodded his head with
solemnity, and made a conscientious effort to remember what she was
speaking of. He was not much in the habit of attending to what was
said to him, finding his own thoughts more interesting than those of
his parishioners. The parishioners, being aware of this peculiarity,
put it down, very naturally, to eccentricity for which he was rather
to be pitied than condemned, and his popularity was in no way abated
by it. Mr. Fetherston was unmarried, in age about sixty; tall, stout,
red-faced, of good family, a noted woodcock shot and salmon fisher, a
carpenter, and an incessant pipe-smoker. These being his leading
gifts, it will probably, and with accuracy, be surmised by persons
conversant with the Irish Church, that he was a survival of its
earliest days, when it wa