“But Mary,” interposed Frederica, with an inartistic directness that was in painful contrast to the cadenza, “what has the Major got to say to Doctor Aherne?”

The question was ignored; the artist dashed on into a presto movement, in which, as far as any direct theme was discernible, Dr. Mangan, his cupidity, his riches, the riches of Dr. Aherne’s parents were the leading motives.  Also, parenthetically, that Danny Aherne was without shoe or stocking to his foot when he was going to school in Pribawn with her own poor little boy.  “And look at him now!” continued Mrs. Twomey, on a high reciting note, and still presto, “with his car and his horse, and his coat with an owld cat skin for a collar on it, and his Tommy-shirts without tails!”

There was an instant of pause, and Frederica breathed the words “‘Dicky’ shirt-fronts!” to her bewildered cousin.

“Himself and the Big Docthor walking the streets of Cluhir like two paycocks!” went on Mrs. Twomey with ever-increasing speed and fury.  “Ha!  Ha!  Didn’t I meet him back in Pribawn ere yistherday.  ’How great you are in yourself!’ says I to him.  ’It done you no harm to kill a woman!’ says I.  ‘Mind your own business!’ says he to me.  ‘Throth then, an’ I will mind it!’ says I, ‘an’ I’ll have plenty to mind it without you!  I’ll have plenty to mind it without yourself!  Dannileen alay!’”

“What on earth are you talking about?” Dick broke in impatiently.

Mrs. Twomey flung a glance to the doorway.  Christian was no longer there.  On a lower key, and directed to Miss Coppinger, a fresh stream flowed.  A young woman had died; a young woman who had been privileged to marry a relative, of a degree of relationship obscure, but still honoured, of Mikey Twomey’s; “and she afther having a young son, and the boy that marrit her as proud!—­and a very good baby, and what misfortune came to her no one’d know, only the Lord God Almighty, but she died on them.  And she a fine, hard, hearty, blushy, big lump of a gerr’l.  And ’tis true what they said—­”

The details that followed were hissed, prestissimo, into the ear of Miss Coppinger, but that Dr. Aherne was to be blamed, was made as clear to Dick Talbot-Lowry as to his cousin.

The tale was concluded in tears.

“Look!  I has to cry when I thinks of it!”

It is impossible with Mrs. Twomey, and her like, to argue a point, or to attempt an appeal to reason.  A flat and dictatorial contradiction may have some temporary effect, and Major Talbot-Lowry adopted this method, for lack of better, in defence of his nominee.  Mrs. Twomey, however, continued to weep.

“But Mary,” urged Frederica, “there isn’t a doctor in the world who doesn’t lose a patient sometimes.  It may not have been this unfortunate young man’s fault in the least—­”

“’Tisn’t that I’m crying for at all,” sobbed Mrs. Twomey, a deplorable little figure, her head bent down, while she wiped violently and alternately her nose and her eyes in her sacking apron.  “But it is what the people is sayin’ on the roads about” (sob) “about” (sniff)—­