His sense of beauty, now beginning to acquire consciousness, and sorely afflicted by the decorative scheme that had been adopted in Barty’s bedroom, found solace in the faces of these two women.  Even the lazy consideration of the contrast between their types, was a comfort to Larry, and distracted his mind from the wall-paper (which suggested the contents of Dr. Mangan’s surgery, rhubarb, and mustard-leaves predominating), and from Barty’s taste in art, which in its sacred and profane aspects was alike deplorable.

Nurse Brennan, slight and fair, with the clearest of blue eyes, and a Dresden china complexion—­Larry was already artist enough to study and adore the shadow of her white coif, with its subtle, reflected lights, on her pink, rose-leaf cheek—­and Mrs. Mangan, just a little over-blown, but heavily, darkly handsome, with deep-lidded shadowy eyes, and—­as Master Coppinger pleased himself by discovering—­a slight suggestion of a luxurious Chesterfield sofa, upholstered in rich cream velvet.  When he was getting better, and the rigours of the sick room were relaxing, these two provided him with interest and entertainment of which they were delightfully unaware.

“Well, and what will I give him for his dinner to-day, Norrse?”—­(impossible to persuade the English alphabet to disclose Mrs. Mangan’s pronunciation of this word)—­his hostess would say, drifting largely into Larry’s room, and seating herself on the side of his bed.

“Don’t be making an invalid of him at all, Mrs. Mangan!” Nurse Brennan would rejoin briskly; “I’m just telling him I’d be sorry to get a thump from that old wrist of his, he and the Doctor think so much about!  And he hasn’t as much as a point of temperature those three days!”

“Oh, I say, Nurse!” Larry would protest, “then why won’t you let me get up?”

“Be quite now”—­(in Ireland the “e” in “quiet” is not infrequently thus transposed)—­“and don’t be bothering me, like a good child!” Nurse would reply, with a sidelong flash of her charming eyes, a recognition of Larry’s age and sex that atoned for the opprobrious epithet.

“Would he like a bit of fish now?  I’m going down the town, and I might meet one of the women in from Broadhaven.”  Thus Mrs. Mangan, coaxingly.

“Oh, Mrs. Mangan, please don’t bother!” says Larry.

“Ah, no bother at all!  Sure I was going down anyway to the chapel to get a sup of holy water.  I declare the house is bone dry!  Not a drop in it!”

After dreary winter mornings spent in reading, by the light of a misplaced window, or age-long afternoons, drowsed through in that torpor, mental as well as physical, that overwhelms the victim of a prolonged sojourn in bed, Larry used to find himself looking forward to the conversations between Nurse Brennan and Mrs. Mangan that arose at tea-time, and followed, stimulated by the early darkness of January, in the firelight; the southern voices rising and falling like