“Mr. Coppinger wasn’t so nervous!” retorted Miss Mangan, scorchingly, “and it’s well for me he wasn’t!  What’d I say to the Doctor if I had to tell him his pet dog was dead?”

“Something else, I suppose!” suggested Captain Cloherty, his red moustache lifting in a grin that Miss Mangan found excessively exasperating; “it wouldn’t be the best time to tell the truth at all!”

“How funny you are!” said Tishy, with a blighting glance.  “It’s easy to joke now, when Mr. Coppinger has done the work!”

She swept another glance of her grey eyes at Larry, very different from that that she had bestowed upon the callous Cloherty.

Few young men object to exaltation at the expense of another, especially if that other has two or three inches the advantage in height, and they are themselves not unconscious of deserving.  Larry led his bicycle and walked beside Tishy, and found pleasure in meeting her again after four years of absence.  For one thing, she had become even better-looking than he remembered her—­turned into a thundering handsome young woman, he thought—­and it became him, as an artist, to be a connoisseur in such matters.

“Oh, so you’re going to see the Doctor, are you?” she said, “I know he was expecting you.”  She hesitated.  “I told him I thought I’d be at Mrs. Whelply’s this afternoon.  He—­he might be surprised if he thought I had Tinker out, and that he was in a fight—­”

“I’ll keep it dark,” Larry said, reassuringly, while he wondered if the protecting darkness were also to envelop Captain Cloherty, R.A.M.C.  He thought, on the whole, perhaps, yes.

CHAPTER XXXI

Major Talbot-Lowry had been in a passion for three days, and Lady Isabel, who had borne the storm alone, longed for Christian’s return, as the lone keeper of a lighthouse might long for the support of his comrade during a gale.

Judith came to visit her parents on Monday, but Judith was very far from being Christian, and could be relied on merely as far as a counter-irritant might prove of service.

“Well, of course, it was abominable impertinence of the priest to come up with the tenants to try and bully you, Papa, but you know, I see their point.”  Thus, Judith, annoyingly, and with pertinacity.

“You do, do you!” interjected Judith’s progenitor, his once ruddy face now a congested purple.  “It seems to me, Judith, you’re always deuced ready to see any one’s point but mine!”

“After all,” went on Judith, with all the self-confidence and intolerance of five and twenty, “it’s in your interest to sell, just as much as theirs to buy!  With this detestable Government in power it will be a case of the Sibylline Books.  You’ll see the Nationalists will have it all their own way, and the next Act—­”