A spell of cold weather had compelled a postponement of Larry’s return to his own home.  When snow and frost visit a country unused to their attentions, they are treated with a respect that they do not receive elsewhere.  The Doctor’s orders were strict, and Larry spent the last days of his stay at No. 6, The Mall, seated in semi-invalid state by the dining-room fire, occupied, mainly, in the consumption of literature provided by his new friend, Mr. Barty Mangan, that consisted of poems, books, and pamphlets of precisely that shade of politics of which his family most thoroughly disapproved, and absorbing what would be, in their opinion, the most entirely poisonous points of view.

The Big Doctor, smoking a comfortable evening pipe over the fire, would join in the discussions between his son and his visitor, offering just as much opposition to Larry’s revolutionary flights as was stimulating, and flattering his sense of youth and daring.

“We mustn’t send him back to his auntie too much of a rebel altogether!” The Doctor would say, grinning at the enthusiast with his pipe wedged under a tooth; “isn’t it good enough for you to be a poor decent old Nationalist like myself?  I’m sure there’s no one would disapprove of me, is there, Annie?”

“Don’t be too sure of that at all!” Mrs. Mangan would reply coquettishly, trying to look as if she did not agree with him; “wait till his auntie hears the notions Larry’s taking up with, and she’ll think we’re all the worst in the world!  And the Major!  The Major’ll go cracked-mad!”

“It doesn’t matter where he goes!” says Larry, defiantly, “I’ve had these ‘notions,’ as you call them, for ages and ages!”

“Ah, God help you, child!” Mrs. Mangan would probably say, “keep quiet now, till I get you a glass of hot milk!”

Politics did not form the only point of contact that had been established between Larry and the Mangan household.  Since his promotion to comparative convalescence, Tishy, daughter of the house, had entered more actively into his scheme of life, and the point of entrance was music.  Some divergence in view as to music is more easily condoned, on both sides, than in the other realms of the spirit.  It matters not from how far countries the travellers may come, or how widely sundered may be their ideals, there are rest-houses at which they can draw rein and find agreement.  One of these, possibly the greatest of them, is folk song.  Ireland, whose head is ever turned over her shoulder, looking to the past, has, in her folk song, at least, reason and justification for her preoccupation with what has been in her music, rather than with what is, or is to come.  It is difficult to reconcile the eternal beauty of traditional Irish melody with the lack of musical interest and feeling that distinguishes the mass of modern Irish life.  But, here and there, a string of the harp that has hung, mute, on Tara’s walls for so many centuries, utters a sigh of sweet sound, and at Number 6, The Mall, Cluhir, the soul of music had still some power of inspiration.