ed, uncontrollably, a comparison with
a heavy and truculent black bull.

"'Tis highly inconvenient to me to be boxed up in bed this way, at
this time," said Father Sweeny, with a small hot eye upon his
attendant nun that would have said instantly to any one less entirely
kind, religious, and painstaking, that he had no immediate need of her
services; "Sister Maria Joseph, I wonder would you be so kind as to
bring me the paper? I didn't see it to-day at all."

Sister Maria Joseph turned her amiable, unruffled face, with that pure
complexion that would seem to be one of the compensations for the
renunciation of the world, towards her patient, and said,
obsequiously:

"I beg your pordon, Fawther?"

The little eyes had a hotter sparkle as Father Sweeny repeated his
request.

"It's a wonder to me," he growled to Dr. Mangan, after Sister Maria
Joseph had left the room, having taken, in her anxiety to show
respect, quite half a minute in closing the door with suitable
noiselessness, "why people can't attend to what's said to them! If
there's a thing I hate, it's being bothered repeating an entirely
trivial matter, which--"--here Father Tim's voice began to take on
the angry, high tenor of one of his prototypes--"she had a right to
have heard at the first offer! I declare I'm beside meself sometimes
with the annoyance I get!"

Dr. Mangan laid his spatulate fingers upon the sufferer's hairy wrist.

"We'll have to give his Reverence a sedative, Danny," he said, winking
at his colleague. "I'd be sorry to see you that way, Father; the bed's
narrow enough for you as it is, without having you beside yourself in
it!"

Father Sweeny's mood was one to which chaff did not commend itself. He
snatched his hand from beneath the Doctor's fingers, and picked up
some letters that lay beside him.

"Look at this, I ask you! From Mary Murphy, saying her husband is
quite well, and that he took the turn for good from the minute he was
anointed! And me lying here crippled!"

"'The dog it was that died!'" quoted Dr. Mangan, smoothly.

"What dog?" demanded Father Sweeny, with indignation, "I d'no what
you're talking about!"

"Ah, nothing, nothing," said the Big Doctor, with a lift of the spirit
at the thought of his superior culture, "but surely it wasn't to show
me Mary Murphy's letter that you sent poor Sister Maria Joseph on a
fool's errand?"

"Why a fool's errand?" demanded the now incensed Father Sweeny. "What
d'ye mean?"

"L