At the back of Miss Coppinger’s mind was the wish, that she trampled on whenever it stirred, that the Mangans had been less unexceptionally kind and Good Samaritan-like.  “Such an obligation!” she groaned; “they’ve turned their own son out of the house to make room for Larry!  But oh, my dear Isabel, if you could imagine what the house is like!  The untidiness!  The dirt!  Of course they’re unspeakably kind, and Dr. Mangan is certainly very clever, and has managed Larry wonderfully,” went on Frederica, repenting her of her evil speaking, “and I must say I can’t help liking Mrs. Mangan, but the girl—!” Miss Coppinger shut her mouth so tightly that her lips became thin, white lines.  “Keep the door of your lips” was a text which she had in her youth illuminated for herself.  She often found that nothing save a sudden and violent slam would keep that door shut, and, to do her justice, the slams, when the conversation turned on the Mangan household, were both frequent and violent.

This was later, when Larry was getting better, and when his aunt had begun to find the daily drive to Cluhir something of a strain.  It was not until he was practically convalescent that he was permitted to receive other visitors.  Even the daughter of the house, and that unknown son, into whose bedroom he had been thrust, were, for him, beneath the surface, and their presence only inferential.  Barty was domiciled at a friend’s, and Miss Tishy held aloof, the hushed voices, and general restraint imposed by illness, being not at all to her taste.  Lady Isabel came once, with his aunt, and Christian crept shyly in behind them.  Christian was wont to be silent in the presence of her elders.  That great and admirable maxim, once widely instilled into the young, whose purport is that children should seldom be seen and never heard, had early been accepted by Christian, without resentment, even, as she grew older, with gratitude.  Having diffidently taken Larry’s listless and pallid paw, she had slipped into the background, and waited silently, while her eager brain absorbed and stored every detail for future meditation.  Long after Larry had lightly forgotten all save the large facts of his illness and incarceration, Christian could describe the Pope, whose highly-coloured presentment beatified (rather than beautified) the wall over Larry’s bed, and could imitate, with the accuracy of a phonograph, the voice of Mrs. Mangan, as she issued her opinions on the state of the weather to her distinguished visitors.

CHAPTER X

The “touch of pneumonia,” prophesied by Dr. Mangan, had proved to be a sufficiently emphatic one.  Larry’s recovery was slow, and during his languid convalescence, he found himself becoming sincerely attached to the Big Doctor and Mrs. Mangan, and their high place in his affections was shared by the nurse provided by Miss Coppinger.  The bond of a common faith was one that, at this stage of his development, had but little appeal to Larry, but he was, at all events, spared any possibility of suffering from the feelings of sub-friction, if not of antagonism, that inevitably stirred in his aunt’s breast, if she found herself brought into relation closer than that of employer and employed with those of the older creed.