ca, using as was her
wont, the well-worn phrase with guileless zest. She held that although
it might not, primarily, have been intended to describe the Roman
Catholic Priesthood, its application in a later age was obvious.

With a cautious eye on the wolf, she approached the yew hedge.

"Larry! Father Sweeny's at the hall door. You must ask him in to
lunch!"

To herself she thought: "He's Larry's affair, thank goodness! And I'll
see that my young man does his duty!"

When Frederica spoke of, or to, her nephew, as "my young man," it was
generally in connection with what she felt to be his duty, and felt
also that it was her duty to see that his was not shirked.

Father Tim Sweeny, at lunch, at the house of his chief parishioner,
was a very different being from the damaged and ferocious bull in
hospital. Conscious of his priestly dignity and of the need of
supporting it, but shaken by the minor stresses of the situation, the
senseless multiplicity of forks and spoons, the bewildering
restrictions by which he felt himself to be webbed about, hampered,
mastered, Father Tim was as a wild bull in a net, and was even
pathetic in his unavailing efforts to prove himself equal to his
surroundings. He cleared his throat at intervals, with an authority
that seemed to prelude something more epoch-making than an assent to
one of Frederica's industrious platitudes; he snuffled and fidgeted,
eating scarcely at all, and repelling the reverential assiduities of
the servants with shattering abruptness.

"Christian saved the situation," Frederica said, in subsequent
conversation with the Reverend Charles Fetherston; she absolutely
'charmed him to a smile.' She said afterwards that the smile made her
think of a Druidic stone circle, slightly imperfect from age! She
always thinks of absurd things; but I was grateful to her! She has an
amazing gift for setting people at their ease."

"I'm not sure that our respected friend might not be more tolerable
when he was _not_ at his ease!" said the Reverend Charles.

"Larry simply sulked," continued Miss Coppinger; "I'm afraid Paris
life does not inculcate much respect for religion."

"Very possibly!" said the Reverend Charles, non-committally. "I feel
for poor Sweeny! He knows now what Purgatory is like!"

"I assure you I was as civil as I knew how to be," asserted Frederica.

"I'm sure you were!" said the Reverend Charles, stuffing a pipe as he
spoke, and sniggering into the bowl.

M