"By Jingo! You don't often see the beat o' that for a sky! Look at it, Larry. There's Orange and Green for you, if you like! G.o.d! I wish _we_ could get them to work together like that!"

One of those transformation scenes that sometimes follow on an overcast and rainy day, was happening in the west. The sun had sunk behind the hills, the grey clouds had vanished; the higher heaven was green, clear and pale, but low in the west, long and fleecy rollers of golden cloud lay in a sea of burning orange.

At about the same time, the golden stream that had flowed so generously from Mrs. Mangan's purse, had failed, and Mrs. Mangan, her arms full of the fruit of those Christian graces of Faith, Hope and Charity, that are indispensable to the success of a _bazaar_, was asking Evans to order for her her "caw," by which term she indicated the vehicle that had conveyed her to the scene of her triumph.

For it was evident to the meanest capacity that Mrs. Mangan had now paid her footing in society.

CHAPTER XIV

"Go away from me, Miss Christian!" shouted Mrs. Twomey (but this was merely an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of pleased surprise, not to be taken literally).

"Go-to-G.o.d-he-did-not!"

"He did, indeed, Mrs. Twomey!" replied Christian, rooting at her habit pocket, and extracting her purse. "He said that he'd won the scholarship, and he knew you were praying hard for him or he wouldn't have got it, and he said I was to give you this, with his love."

"This" was a golden sovereign, a coin that did not often in its beauty and entirety come Mrs. Twomey's way.

She curtseyed so low that since--as has been said--she was but little over four feet, Christian had to lean low over Harry's withers in order to drop the sovereign into her hand.

"That the sun may shine on his soul, my lovely gentleman! That he may never want crown, pown', nor shi'n, nor you nayther! The Kingdom o'

Heaven is your due, the pair of yee, and may yee be long going there!

Amin!"

A silent and prayerful moment followed on the benedictions, and Mrs.

Twomey's bright little eyes rolled devoutly heavenwards. This concession to the solemnity of the occasion disposed of, the beneficiary became normal again.

"Look!" she resumed, while she bestowed the sovereign in an incredibly old bag-purse with a bra.s.s rim; "tell him there's always one foolish in a family, and what it is with Masther Larry, he's too give-ish!

That's what he is!"

"You can tell him so yourself," replied Christian. "He'll be home in a week."

"Very good, faith! There's a welcome before him whatever time he'll come! Sure I thought he'd be kept back in England till the Christmas?"

"He's finished with school now," said Christian. "He's going abroad for a bit after Christmas, and then he's going to Oxford!"

The glory in Christian's voice conveyed more to Mrs. Twomey than any statement of fact could achieve.

"Well, well! I'm proud out of him, the poor child! But I wisht it was home in his own house he was to be," she replied, raising her skirt, and stuffing the purse into a large pocket that hung round her waist over a red flannel petticoat; "han't he lessons enought learnt?"

"Oh, but he _loves_ going to Oxford, Mrs. Twomey," said Christian; "he's looking forward to it awfully; and _I'm_ going to France to do lessons, too! I'll be talking French to you, Mrs.

Twomey, when I come back!"

Mrs. Twomey uttered a screech of well-simulated horror.

"For G.o.d's sake, child, do not!" she exclaimed; "didn't I know one o'

thim in Boyshton, a docther he was, and a German. He had as many slishes and sloshes as'd fill a book! Sure I thought I'd lose me life thrying could I make off at all what he said to me!"

"Well, I shall be slishing and sloshing to you when I come home, Mrs.

Twomey!" said Christian, who was skilled in converse with such as Mrs.

Twomey; "but it will be in French. I suppose you talked German to your Boston doctor?"

"H'th indeed! Little enough I said to him! I never had anny wish for thim docthors at all. Look at the little rakeen that's after gettin'

the Dispinsary at Cunnock-a-Ceoil! Three hundred pound the father ped for it for him! A low, hungry little fella, that'd thravel the counthry for the sake of a ha'penny--G.o.d!"

The flow of Mrs. Twomey's eloquence ceased in shock, as Major Talbot-Lowry and Miss Coppinger emerged from the dairy behind her.

"Well, Mary," said d.i.c.k, "who is it who's so hard up for ha'pence?"

Mrs. Twomey's equanimity was not slow to re-establish itself. She and the Major were "the one age," and they had grown up together.

"Why then, your Honour knows him well, and too well!" she snapped at him, looking up his long length to his handsome, good natured face, much as a minute female cur-dog might look and snap, presuming on her s.e.x, at a Great Dane. "It's the new little docthor, Danny Aherne, that your Honour is afther putting in the Dispinsary!"

"Oh, that poor little fellow?" said d.i.c.k, laughing, but with a touch of discomposure; "_I_ didn't put him there. What's the matter with him, any how? Why, he hasn't been at the job three months! Give the man time, Mary, give him time! I'll engage you'll all be in love with him by this time next year!"

Mrs. Twomey glanced at Miss Coppinger, and replied with decorous piety:

"G.o.d grant it!"

She then, with an admirable a.s.sumption of respect for her superiors, and zeal for her office, moved past her visitors into the dairy.

d.i.c.k Talbot-Lowry hesitated a moment or two, then he laughed again, and strode after her into the dark dairy; Miss Coppinger followed him.

Mrs. Twomey, a tiny and almost imperceptible bundle, was already on her knees in a corner, scrubbing a glistening metal churn, and so engrossed in her task as to be unaware of her visitors.

"Look here, Mary," began the Major, with a touch of severity; "what's all this about Doctor Aherne?"

Mrs. Twomey rose from her knees, dried her little scarlet claws in her ap.r.o.n, and stood to attention. Having opened the debate by calling fervently upon her G.o.d to witness that she knew nothing of the matter, she proceeded, like a solo pianist, to run her fingers, as it were, lightly over the keys. Pa.s.sing swiftly from her own birth, upbringing, invincible respectability, and remoteness from all neighbours, or knowledge of neighbours, she coruscated in a cadenza in which the families of Talbot-Lowry and Coppinger, and her devotion to both, were dazzlingly blended, and finished in a grand chord on the apparently irrelevant fact that she would die dead before she would put down any dirty stain before the Major's honour.

"But Mary," interposed Frederica, with an inartistic directness that was in painful contrast to the cadenza, "what has the Major got to say to Doctor Aherne?"

The question was ignored; the artist dashed on into a presto movement, in which, as far as any direct theme was discernible, Dr. Mangan, his cupidity, his riches, the riches of Dr. Aherne's parents were the leading motives. Also, parenthetically, that Danny Aherne was without shoe or stocking to his foot 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 "'d.i.c.ky' shirt-fronts!" to her bewildered cousin.

"Himself and the Big Docthor walking the streets of Cluhir like two payc.o.c.ks!" 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?" d.i.c.k 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 G.o.d 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 d.i.c.k Talbot-Lowry as to his cousin.

The tale was concluded in tears.