ous blue eyes,
he wrinkled his forehead with the super-intelligent concentration of a
not very brilliant intellect. "Didn't I hear that old Fogarty is
giving up the Dispensary here? Why don't you run him for that?"

The shepherding of Dick Lowry was really an affair of a simplicity
unworthy of preparation made by that _ruse_ old collie, the Big
Doctor. Nevertheless, being an artist, he continued to play the game.

"Knock Ceoil! Begad, that's a great notion! Now I come to think of it,
I did hear something of old Fogarty giving up, but somehow I never
thought of young Danny Aherne in connection with it. I thought I was
as well able as any man to put two and two together, but I declare I
might never have thought of it if it hadn't been for you! They say, if
you're too close to a thing, you can't see it!"

Thus did the collie yap, while the sheep (who was a member of the
Dispensary Committee) gratified, and pleasantly conscious of
originality, trotted up the path and into the fold that had been
prepared for it.

Meanwhile, in what house-agents call the reception-rooms, the Sale of
Work raged on, with auctions, with raffles, with card-fortunes, told
in a cave of rugs by a devoted sorceress, in a temperature that would
inure her to face with composure the witch's destiny at the stake;
with "occasional music," that fell upon the turmoil of talk more
softly than any petals from blown roses on the grass, and was just
sufficiently perceptible to impart the requisite flavour of festivity.
One item of the musical programme had indeed had power to still the
storm, but since it was contributed by the Mangan Quartet, it must be
admitted that, charming though it was, it owed something of its
success to surprise. The countryside had rallied to Lady Isabel with a
response that did credit to her as to them, yet, thronged though the
rooms were the Mangan family shone with a unique lustre as alone
representing the mighty Church of Rome.

"Wonderful of them to come!" said the Church of Ireland ladies
approvingly; "the only R.C.'s here!"

Yet the Mangan family was not quite alone in this representative
position; young Mr. Coppinger, their (as it were) inventor and
patentee, shared it with them, and was, moreover, beginning, for the
first time, and not without displeasure, to realise something of the
social complications that are involved by the difference of creed. It
was a matter of atmosphere; quite intangible, and quite perceptible.