the flickering flames, becoming soon self-engrossed, and forgetful of the silent listener in the bed.  Sometimes sleep would lap him in slow, stealthy peace, and the voices would die away, or come intermittently, as the sound of a band marching through a town fades and recurs at the end of a street.  But without being aware of it, he was absorbing knowledge, learning a new point of view, breathing a new atmosphere that was to influence him more deeply than he could have any conception was possible.

One evening the talk fell on the congenial topic of illness, doctors and patients, nurses and nuns, all spinning in the many-coloured whirlpool of talk, now one and now another cresting the changing wave.  The fact that Larry was of their own religion, counterbalanced his belonging to an alien class, and if their consciences sometimes hinted at a lack of discretion, they quieted them with the assurance that “the poor child was asleep!”

“Ah, the nuns are wonderful!” said Mrs. Mangan, languishingly.  “Look how lovely they have the Workhouse Infirmary!  I was taking some flowers to Reverend Mother, and she was telling me what a beautiful death old Catherine Macsweeny made.  Reverend Mother rained tears when she told me.”

Nurse Brennan sniffed.

“Reverend Mother’s a sweet woman, and the nuns are very attentive when a person’d be dying, but indeed Mrs. Mangan, if you ask me, I’d say ’twas the only time they were much use to their patients!  Up at that infirmary what have patients at night to look after them only an old inmate, and she ‘wanting’ maybe!”

Larry began to giggle, and was moved to try his wit.

“Nurse!  What’s the difference between a stale mate and an old inmate?  And what does it want?”

“It wants the very same as yourself—­brains!” returned Nurse, swiftly.  “Now may be!” She wagged her head at him triumphantly, turning aside to hide the smile of victory, and Larry thought how lovely was her profile, as the firelight etched it in incandescent lines on the smoky background.

“Well, indeed, the Poor have a deal to put up with!” said Mrs. Mangan, lazily, leaning back in her basket-chair, with her big grey cat purring like an aeroplane engine on her knee.  “The Doctor says no one but himself knows the way he’s dragged all over the country, patching up after some of them young fellows that get dispensaries before they’re fit to doctor the cat!”

The reformer, that underlay the artist in Larry, awoke.

“But, Mrs. Mangan,” he said, hotly, sitting up in bed, and glaring into the gloom at Mrs. Mangan’s half-seen face, “why do they give dispensaries to chaps that can’t doctor a cat?”

“Because their fathers can spend four or five hundred pounds to buy votes!” returned Mrs. Mangan, laughing at him.  “Is that news to you?  Lie down child, and don’t be looking at me like that! I haven’t a vote to sell!”

Larry subsided with vague splutterings.  Nurse came to his bedside and smoothed the clothes.