families of Talbot-Lowry and Coppinger, and her devotion to both, were
dazzlingly blended, and finished in a grand chord on the apparently
irrelevant fact that she would die dead before she would put down any
dirty stain before the Major's honour.

"But Mary," interposed Frederica, with an inartistic directness that
was in painful contrast to the cadenza, "what has the Major got to say
to Doctor Aherne?"

The question was ignored; the artist dashed on into a presto movement,
in which, as far as any direct theme was discernible, Dr. Mangan, his
cupidity, his riches, the riches of Dr. Aherne's parents were the
leading motives. Also, parenthetically, that Danny Aherne was without
shoe or stocking to his foot when he was going to school in Pribawn
with her own poor little boy. "And look at him now!" continued Mrs.
Twomey, on a high reciting note, and still presto, "with his car and
his horse, and his coat with an owld cat skin for a collar on it, and
his Tommy-shirts without tails!"

There was an instant of pause, and Frederica breathed the words
"'Dicky' shirt-fronts!" to her bewildered cousin.

"Himself and the Big Docthor walking the streets of Cluhir like two
paycocks!" went on Mrs. Twomey with ever-increasing speed and fury.
"Ha! Ha! Didn't I meet him back in Pribawn ere yistherday. 'How great
you are in yourself!' says I to him. 'It done _you_ no harm to
kill a woman!' says I. 'Mind your own business!' says he to me.
'Throth then, an' I _will_ mind it!' says I, 'an' I'll have
plenty to mind it without you! I'll have plenty to mind it without
yourself! Dannileen alay!'"