after the road had
been reached, an even more supreme thankfulness was his. Coming
rapidly towards him, he beheld Dr. Mangan's outside car, and upon it
was the large person of Dr. Mangan himself.

"Well," said Charles that evening, to Mr. Evans, "if it was the Angel
Gabriel I seen flying down to me, I wouldn't be as glad as what I was
when I seen the Big Doctor on the side-car!"

And Mr. Evans had caustically rejoined: "It'll be the funny day when
you'll see wings on _him_!" meaning Dr. Mangan, of whom he had a
low opinion.

Wings or no wings, no angel of mercy and succour was ever more welcome
or more needed than was the Big Doctor at this moment. Larry, very
white, shivering with pain and cold, was lifted on to the car;
Christian was told to gallop away home as fast as she could, and
Charles was directed to let Miss Coppinger know that her nephew would
be put up for the night at the Doctor's own house at Cluhir.

"You can say to her that I met the Hunt, and one of them told me what
happened," said the Big Doctor, "and I knew then what to do."

It might, indeed, habitually be said of Dr. Mangan that he knew very
well what to do. There were, indeed, but two occasions on record when
it might have seemed that he had not so known. The first of these was
when he had abandoned an improving practice in Dublin to work as his
father's partner in his native Cluhir, the second, when, preliminary
to that return, he had married a lady, alleged, by inventive and
disagreeable people, to have been his cook. The disagreeable people
had also said disagreeable things as to the nature of the stress that
had prompted the marriage. But it was now twenty years since the
Mangans had been established at Number Six, The Mall, Cluhir; the
Doctor had come in for his father's money as well as his practice, and
was respected as "a warm man"; the disagreeable ones had grown old,
and people who are both old and disagreeable cannot expect to command
a large audience. Mrs. Mangan, on the contrary, was neither the one
nor the other, being, at this time, but little over forty, and as
kindly, lazy, and handsome a creature as ever lived down spiteful
gossip by good-nature. When "The Dawkthor" (as she called him, with a
drowsy drag on the first syllable) had galloped in at one o'clock to
command Barty's room to be got ready at once, Mrs. Mangan was still in
what she called "dishable," and was straying between her bedroom and
the kitchen, pleasurably i