ion in the way of marriage or profession had
been made for any of them. Of the one son, Phineas, the hero of the
following pages, the mother and five sisters were very proud. The
doctor was accustomed to say that his goose was as good as any other
man's goose, as far as he could see as yet; but that he should like
some very strong evidence before he allowed himself to express an
opinion that the young bird partook, in any degree, of the qualities
of a swan. From which it may be gathered that Dr. Finn was a man of
common-sense.

Phineas had come to be a swan in the estimation of his mother and
sisters by reason of certain early successes at college. His father,
whose religion was not of that bitter kind in which we in England
are apt to suppose that all the Irish Roman Catholics indulge, had
sent his son to Trinity; and there were some in the neighbourhood of
Killaloe,--patients, probably, of Dr. Duggin, of Castle Connell, a
learned physician who had spent a fruitless life in endeavouring to
make head against Dr. Finn,--who declared that old Finn would not be
sorry if his son were to turn Protestant and go in for a fellowship.
Mrs. Finn was a Protestant, and the five Miss Finns were Protestants,
and the doctor himself was very much given to dining out among his
Protestant friends on a Friday. Our Phineas, however, did not turn
Protestant up in Dublin, whatever his father's secret wishes on that
subject may have been. He did join a debating society, to success
in which his religion was no bar; and he there achieved a sort of
distinction which was both easy and pleasant, and which, making
its way down to Killaloe, assisted in engendering those ideas as
to swanhood of which maternal and sisterly minds are so sweetly
susceptible. "I know half a dozen old windbags at the present
moment," said the doctor, "who were great fellows at debating clubs
when they were boys." "Phineas is not a boy any longer," said Mrs.
Finn. "And windbags don't get college scholarships," said Matilda
Finn, the second daughter. "But papa always snubs Phinny," said
Barbara, the youngest. "I'll snub you, if you don't take care," said
the doctor, taking Barbara tenderly by the ear;--for his youngest
daughter was the doctor's pet.

The doctor certainly did not snub his son, for he allowed him to go
over to London when he was twenty-two years of age, in order that he
might read with an English barrister. It was the doctor's wish that
his son might be ca