oot when he was going to school in Pribawn
with her own poor little boy. "And look at him now!" continued Mrs.
Twomey, on a high reciting note, and still presto, "with his car and
his horse, and his coat with an owld cat skin for a collar on it, and
his Tommy-shirts without tails!"

There was an instant of pause, and Frederica breathed the words
"'Dicky' shirt-fronts!" to her bewildered cousin.

"Himself and the Big Docthor walking the streets of Cluhir like two
paycocks!" went on Mrs. Twomey with ever-increasing speed and fury.
"Ha! Ha! Didn't I meet him back in Pribawn ere yistherday. 'How great
you are in yourself!' says I to him. 'It done _you_ no harm to
kill a woman!' says I. 'Mind your own business!' says he to me.
'Throth then, an' I _will_ mind it!' says I, 'an' I'll have
plenty to mind it without you! I'll have plenty to mind it without
yourself! Dannileen alay!'"

"What on earth are you talking about?" Dick broke in impatiently.

Mrs. Twomey flung a glance to the doorway. Christian was no longer
there. On a lower key, and directed to Miss Coppinger, a fresh stream
flowed. A young woman had died; a young woman who had been privileged
to marry a relative, of a degree of relationship obscure, but still
honoured, of Mikey Twomey's; "and she afther having a young son, and
the boy that marrit her as proud!--and a very good baby, and what
misfortune came to her no one'd know, only the Lord God Almighty, but
she died on them. And she a fine, hard, hearty, blushy, big lump of a
gerr'l. And 'tis true what they said--"

The details that followed were hissed, prestissimo, into the ear of
Miss Coppinger, but that Dr. Aherne was to be blamed, was made as
clear to Dick Talbot-Lowry as to his cousin.

The tale was concluded in tears.

"Look! I has to cry when I thinks of it!"

It is impossible with Mrs. Twomey, and her like, to argue a point, or
to attempt an appeal to reason. A flat and dictatorial contradiction
may have some temporary effect, and Major Talbot-Lowry adopted this
method, for lack of better, in defence of his nominee. Mrs. Twomey,
however, continued to weep.

"But Mary," urged Frederica, "there isn't a doctor in the world who
doesn't lose a patient sometimes. It may not have been this
unfortunate young man's fault in the least--"

"'Tisn't that I'm crying for at all," sobbed Mrs. Twomey, a deplorable
little figure, her head bent down, while she wiped violently and
alternately her nose and her eye