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.

"Listen to me now," she said impressively, "and _I'll_ tell you
something to make you angry, if you like!"

She leaned against the foot of the bed, with her hands in the pockets
of her apron, looking down at him. "I was in charge of th' infirmary
at Mellifont one time, and late one evening a young farm-boy was
brought in to me with a dislocated foot and a 'Pott's Fracture'--"

"In the name o' God, what's that?" enquired Mrs. Mangan.

"Fracture of the fibula, but the case I'm speaking of had the two
bones broken at the ankle," explained Nurse Brennan, in her most
professional manner; "sure I thought anyone'd know that! And I can
tell you," she leaned towards Larry, striking the palm of her left
hand with her little clenched right fist, as if to hammer the words
into him, "I can assure _you_, that as bad as you thought you
were, you don't know what pain _is_ beside what that boy
suffered! Well, I sent for the doctor--a young brat of a fella that
hadn't but just left college. 'He'll want an anaesthetic,' says he,
'I'll send down for Doctor ----' (I'll not tell you his name--Smith,