"I never knew you that
you'd be without an answer, no matter what anyone'd say to you! 'Many
mansions,' says you! I declare I'd never have thought of that! Father,
wouldn't you say he answered him well!"

Father Greer, having made his point, smiled indulgently, and, as he
was deeply involved in a mouthful of tough goose, the smile, blended
with the act of mastication, made him look more than ever like a fox,
a fox in a trap, gnashing at his captors.

"I always knew the Doctor could be trusted to 'give a knave an
answer,' as Shakespeare says," he said, when the power of speech was
restored to him; "I'm often surprised at the liberty, I might almost
say the licence, that is met with in Protestants in connection with
their religion. Take the case of young Mr. Coppinger that I was
speaking of. That was a melancholy instance of evil communications
corrupting good manners. I may say that I regard with anxiety a too
great freedom, what I may call an unrestrained intercourse, between
members of the two churches--that is, indeed, if I am justified in
describing as a church that which I have heard stigmatised as 'a
fortuitous concourse of atheistic atoms'!"

Father Greer's nose came down over his upper lip, the corners of his
mouth went up, and a succession of sniffs indicated that he was
laughing.

"That may be rather severe," he conceded, "but I may say that, for my
part, I consider that Catholics have a sufficiency of pleasing society
within their own communion, without striving to go beyond it!"

Father Greer paused, looked round the table as if to receive the
general assent, and put his sharp nose into the tumbler of brown
whisky and water, to whose replenishing the Doctor had not failed to
attend.

A rather stricken silence followed. Mrs. Mangan's large and handsome
brown eyes turned guiltily to her husband, and moved on from his face
to one of the many trophies of the Mount Music Sale, a Protestant
chair back, now flaunting itself on a Catholic chair, under the very
eyes of the Parish Priest!

Barty glowered at his plate; Tishy, who had not enjoyed herself at the
Sale, felt, in consequence, that she was now justified in doing so at
the expense of her family, and held up her head, and looked at her
father. It was plain to see that the elephant had felt the prick of
the Mahout's _ankus_. The Big Doctor's face was perturbed. Tishy
saw him look at the little priest's glass, and knew that he wished it
were empty, in