regiment quartered at Riverstown, and it was not long before Tommy and
Harry were beginning to find themselves in a more familiar and less
exigent position. Judith, on the grey mare, went by them like a flash;
Doctor Mangan overtook them heavily, and heavily passed them. Father
David, riding a little wide of the crowd, waved a friendly hand to
Christian, as the black mare, composed and discreet, as became a
daughter of the Church, dwelt for an instant on the top of a wide
bank, before she struck off into the next field. Worst indignity of
all, Charles, the coachman, on the elderly carriage horse, drew
alongside, and presumed to offer directions and admonitions. "As if,"
thought Christian, as she drove Harry at the bank in the wake of the
black mare, "I cared a pin what he says!"

Gone for poor Charles were the days when Miss Christian had revered
him above all other created things; days such as the one on which,
after a ride round the yard on an unharnessed carriage horse,
Christian, in gratitude too great for words, had attempted to kiss
him. Charles had repelled the embrace, saying tactfully: "No pleasures
in Lent, Miss!" and Christian had accepted the excuse. Then Miss
Christian had been three years old, now she was thirteen, and Charles
had, in the interval, married a cook, and lost his figure, and with
it, had departed his nerve, and the reverance of Miss Christian, and
he knew it.

Close behind Charles came Dr. Mangan's "little girl," who had been
confided with a lubricating half-crown, to his care. Miss Letitia
Mangan was far from considering herself a little girl. She was sixteen
and a half, and conceived herself to be of combatant rank, even though
her thick, dark hair banged on her back in a ponderous pigtail, and
her education at the Cluhir Convent School was still uncompleted. The