“Ah, you haven’t the money gathered yet.  The delay isn’t worth exciting yourself about!” said the Doctor, soothingly.  Father Tim amused him, and he liked him, being well aware that if his temper was hot, his heart was correspondingly warm.  “You’ll see the young chap will give you the site as soon as look at you.”

“And how do I know the young chap will be any easier than the old one?  Isn’t he there at Mount Music all day and every day, at their tea-parties and their dinner-parties?  Won’t they have him married up to one of the daughters before you can look around?  He may call himself a Catholic, but them English Catholics—­COME IN!”

Sister Maria Joseph’s faint tap at the door had as instant an effect as a squib, planted in the mane of the monarch of the bull-ring, might produce.

“I cannt—­the door’s locked, Fawther!” came Sister Maria Joseph’s gentle voice, in mild protest.  “I couldn’t find the—­”

“Never mind it!  I have it myself—­I have it, I tell you!” shouted Father Tim; in his voice the appeal to a merciful Heaven to grant patience was unmistakable.

Sister Maria Joseph, recognising with trembling her superfluousness, withdrew.

“It’s Barty will have that job we were speaking of just now, before you were coaxing Sister Maria Joseph to go away from you,” resumed Dr. Mangan.  “Maybe you didn’t hear he’s got the Coppinger’s Court Agency?  Young Coppinger offered it to him yesterday.”

“It’s a good thing it’s out of Talbot-Lowry’s hands anyhow,” growled Father Sweeny.

“Larry’s up at my house every day now, about a concert they’re to have,” went on the Doctor, tranquilly.  “Tishy’s helping him.  He’s very fond of music.  I think you’re mistaken in thinking he’ll be married to one of the Major’s daughters in such a hurry!”

“The first thing he’ll want to do is to tidy up his property and pacify the tenants,” said Dr. Aherne, in his small, piping voice.  “They’re not too pleased with the way they are now.  The Major was rather short with some of them, now and again.  There was Herlihy, and two of the Briens, was talking to me and saying what would they do at all with Father Tim here, away.  They were thinking would Father Hogan—­”

“Br-r-r-r-r-h!”

As a bull shakes his head, with a reverberating roar at the foes he cannot reach, so did Father Tim Sweeny, crippled and furious, roll his big head, growling, on his pillows.  His dark hair lay in tight rings on his broad and bulging forehead, and curled in strength over his head back to the tonsure.  His eyes were congested with the unavailing rage that possessed him, as he thought of his parish left leaderless.

Had the “Ballad of the Bull” then been written, and had Dr. Mangan been acquainted with it (which seems unlikely) he might have again proved his culture by remembering the injunction to pity “this fallen chief,” as he saw the impotent wrath in Father Tim’s bovine countenance.